ישעיהו, פרק מ״ח, פסוק ז׳

God's involvement in human history sometimes unfolds through events so sudden and unprecedented that they completely defy prediction. By keeping His ultimate plans hidden until the exact moment they occur, God deliberately dismantles human arrogance. This secrecy ensures that people cannot falsely claim to have anticipated these events through their own wisdom or by calculating the laws of nature.

The primary approach among commentators is that these historical shifts are immediate and entirely new. Some explain that the very moment God speaks these events into existence is the exact instant they are created in reality [רד״ק, מצודת דוד]. Others suggest that this marks the specific moment the events are divinely decreed [אבן עזרא]. Going deeper, there is a profound philosophical distinction between the miracles of the past and these newly unfolding events. Earlier miracles merely altered existing natural laws, such as turning water into blood or shifting the movement of the sun. In contrast, these new wonders are a complete creation out of nothing. They are entirely unprecedented, unbound by time or natural causes, and sustained temporarily through pure miracle [מלבי״ם, שד״ל].

Because these occurrences are so deeply unusual, most commentators agree that they remained entirely unknown in the past, even up to the day before they happened. They are so foreign to human experience that no one could have possibly imagined them, predicted their arrival, or heard rumors of them from anyone else [שד״ל, אבן עזרא]. A slightly different perspective suggests that God only shares these plans with the people a brief moment before the actual day they take place [רש״י].

The ultimate purpose behind this divine concealment is to prevent a specific human reaction. God deliberately withholds advance notice so that the people cannot mistakenly claim they already knew what was going to happen. It stops them from believing they deduced the events themselves or that the occurrences were simply the result of natural forces and astrology [מצודת דוד, רד״ק, שד״ל, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Since these wonders are entirely new creations out of nothing, they do not need to be announced by a prophet long in advance to prove their divine origin. The sheer, overwhelming astonishment they provoke is enough to prove that they come directly from God [מלבי״ם].