In ver. 25 a phrase is used of Cyrus which is very obscure, and to which, considering its vagueness even upon the most definite construction, far too much importance has been attached. The meaning of the words, the tenses, the syntax--perhaps even the original text itself--of this verse are uncertain. The English revisers give, _I have raised up one from the north, and he is come; from the rising of the sun one that calleth upon My Name_. This is probably the true syntax.[73] But in what tense is the verb _to call_, and what does _calling upon My name_ mean? In the Old Testament the phrase is used in two senses,--to _invoke or adore_, and to _proclaim_ or _celebrate the name_ of a person.[74] As long as scholars understood that Cyrus was a monotheist, there was a temptation to choose the former of these meanings, and to find in the verse Jehovah's claim upon the Persian, as a worshipper of Himself, the One True God. But this interpretation received a shock from the discovery of a proclamation of Cyrus after his entry into Babylon, in which he invokes the names of Babylonian deities, and calls himself their "servant."[75] Of course his doing so in the year 538 does not necessarily discredit a description of him as a monotheist eight years before. Between 548 and 546--the probable date of ch. xli.--a prophet might in all good faith have hailed as a worshipper of Jehovah a Persian who still stood in the _rising of the sun_,--who had not yet issued from the east and its radiant repute of a religion purer than the Babylonian; although eight years afterwards, from motives of policy, the same king acknowledged the gods of his new subjects. This may be; but there is a more natural way out of the difficulty. Is it fair to lay upon the expression, _calleth on My name_, so precise a meaning as that of a strict monotheism? Some have turned to the other use of the verb, and, taking it in the future tense, have translated, _who shall proclaim_ or _celebrate My name_,--which Cyrus surely did, when, in the name of Jehovah, he drew up the edict for the return of the Jews to Palestine.[76] But do we need to put even this amount of meaning upon the phrase? In itself it is vague, but it also stands parallel to another vague phrase: _I have raised up one from the north, and he is come; from the sunrising one who calleth on My name._ Taken in apposition to the phrase _he is come, calleth on My name_ may mean no more than that, answering to the instigation of Jehovah, and owning His impulse, Cyrus by his career proclaimed or celebrated Jehovah's name. In any case, we have said enough to show that, in our comparative ignorance of what Cyrus' faith was, and in face of the elastic use of the phrase _to call on