Beside Me There Is No Saviour

The Verse

Isaiah 43 is one of the plainest declarations in Scripture that deliverance belongs to Yahuah alone.

For I am Yahuah thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.

— Isaiah 43:3

I, even I, am Yahuah; and beside me there is no saviour.

— Isaiah 43:11

…a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.

— Isaiah 45:21

The Hebrew word behind “Saviour” is moshia, the participle of yasha (H3467), “to save, to deliver.” A moshia is simply “one who saves.” Yahuah calls Himself by that word, and says there is no moshia beside Him (see also Hosea 13:4).

The context shows what the exclusive claim is aimed at: “there was no strange god among you” (43:12), and the nations “pray unto a god that cannot save” (45:20). The rival Isaiah shuts out is another god, never the deliverers Yahuah Himself raises up.

The Trinitarian Argument

Modern teaching builds a short chain on these verses. Isaiah says only Yahuah is Saviour. The Apostolic writings call Yahushua Saviour. Therefore Yahushua must be Yahuah Himself, the second person of a triune God. The argument rests on one assumption that is never stated: that the title “saviour” can belong to no one but Yahuah, in any sense, at any time.

Scripture breaks that assumption, and it does so in the plain English of the King James Version.

The Four Witnesses

The First Witness: A Saviour Given

And Yahuah gave Israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians…

— 2 Kings 13:5

Yahuah gave Israel a saviour, the same moshia found in Isaiah 43:11. No reader takes this saviour to be Yahuah Himself; he was a man given by Yahuah.

The Second Witness: Saviours, Plural

…according to thy manifold mercies thou gavest them saviours, who saved them out of the hand of their enemies.

— Nehemiah 9:27

The plural, moshi‘im. The Levites are looking back on the judges, men such as Othniel and Ehud, each one “raised up” by Yahuah as a moshia (Judges 3:9, 15). The King James renders it “deliverer” there, but the Hebrew does not change.

The Third Witness: Saviours at the End

And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be Yahuah’s.

— Obadiah 1:21

This closes the usual escape route, that the judges were only temporary, earthly deliverers. Obadiah places saviours on Mount Zion at the close of the age, in the same sentence that declares the kingdom to be Yahuah’s. The title is shared at the very end, and it takes nothing from the One who gives it.

The Fourth Witness: A Saviour Exalted by God

The God of our fathers raised up Yahushua, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.

— Acts 5:30–31

God raised up Yahushua. God exalted Him. God made Him to be a Saviour. Every verb has God as its subject and Yahushua as its object. Yahuah cannot be raised up, exalted, or appointed by another. The One who appoints is the Saviour of Isaiah 43:11; the one appointed is the saviour He gives.

The Sender and the Sent

And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

— 1 John 4:14

But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared… according to his mercy he saved us… which he shed on us abundantly through Yahushua Messiah our Saviour.

— Titus 3:4–6

The Father sent the Son to be Saviour. In Titus “God our Saviour” is the One who saves, and the gift is poured out through Yahushua Messiah. Yahuah is the source; the Son is the way the deliverance reaches men. “Neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him” (John 13:16).

His very name carries the whole doctrine:

…thou shalt call his name YAHUSHUA: for he shall save his people from their sins.

— Matthew 1:21

Yahushua means “Yahuah saves.” The name does not say “I save.” Every time it is spoken, it testifies that the deliverance is Yahuah’s. The Son provided the way: the door, the blood, the living way. Yahuah saves through it. Isaiah 43:11 is not contradicted by the Son’s work; it is fulfilled in His name.

The Answer to “A Higher Sense”

Faced with the witnesses, the Trinitarian usually shifts ground: Othniel saved Israel for a season, but Yahushua saves from sin forever, so He must be Saviour in the divine sense. The greatness of the work is not in dispute. The original argument claimed the title alone proves deity, and that argument is gone, because Scripture gives the title to men. A new one must be built, and Acts 5:31 stands in its way: even in the greatest deliverance ever given, God exalts and Yahushua is exalted. The size of a mission does not turn the one sent into the One who sent him. “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).

In the Greek: Sōtēr

The Greek word for “Saviour” in the Apostolic writings is sōtēr (G4990), from sōzō (G4982), “to save.” Modern teaching treats it as if the word itself announced deity. The Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, shows otherwise. It gives Yahuah the title in Isaiah 45:21, “a just God and a sōtēr,” yet it gives the identical word to Othniel and Ehud (Judges 3:9, 15) and calls the judges sōtēras, saviours (Nehemiah 9:27). One Greek Bible, one word, applied to the Saviour who sends and to the saviours He sends.

Paul’s sermon at Antioch even uses the formula of Judges. The Septuagint of Judges 3:9 reads that the Lord “raised up a sōtēr to Israel.” The Received Text of Acts 13:23, behind the King James, reads that God “raised unto Israel a Saviour, Yahushua.” Paul placed Yahushua in the line of the deliverers Yahuah raised up, the greatest of them and the one they all pictured, but raised up all the same.

Conclusion

Isaiah 43:3 and 43:11 stand exactly as written. Yahuah is the only Saviour, and He gives saviours, raises up saviours, and places saviours on Mount Zion at the end. Yahushua is the one He raised up, exalted, and sent, and His name declares whose deliverance it is. The Trinitarian chain needs the title to be untransferable, and the King James Bible transfers it again and again.

The final scene of Scripture keeps the two distinct to the end:

Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

— Revelation 7:10

The multitude names two: the God who sits on the throne, and the Lamb He gave. The throne is not shared, and the Saviour of Isaiah 43:11 is still the One seated on it in the last book of the Bible.