thus prevents v. 1aβ being totally repetition, yet it does so without actually adding anything. The point of the line is merely—but significantly—to resume what we already know before building on it with something genuinely novel in v. 1b. ‘God chose the servant’ is re-expressed as ‘God accepted the servant’. ‘Fancied’ him is the English colloquialism. But it is better to note how this clause is Second Isaiah’s equivalent to the Deuteronomic tautology that explains love by love. Why did Yhwh set