Isaiah 40:26 → Genesis 1:1

In the heart of the great comfort-chapter Isaiah turns the prophet's polemic against idols (Isa 40:18-26) into an appeal to the Creator: "Lift up your eyes on high: Who created all these? He leads forth the starry host by number; He calls each one by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." The original force is monotheistic confrontation — the gods of Babylon are cast and overlaid by craftsmen (40:19-20), but the heavens and their numberless host were created (Heb. bara', the verb reserved for God in Gen 1:1) by the One who alone made "the heavens" of Genesis 1:1. The echo is of the Gen 1:1 creator-frame as a whole — the heaven-and-earth merism whose "host" the same creation account fills (Gen 1:16; cf. Gen 2:1, "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host") — not a verbal citation, which is why this is an Echo and stands with the same Isaian creation-cluster as 40:28, 42:5, and 45:18. The method is redemptive-historical progression and longitudinal theme, not typology: Genesis 1:1's premise (God alone is Creator of all) is developed and pressed — the Maker who numbers and names every star is so powerful that "not one of them is missing," and therefore Jacob has no warrant to say "my way is hidden from the LORD" (40:27). The telos is sight unto savoring: the same numbering, naming care that holds the cosmic host in place is the Creator's tender knowledge of His weary people (40:11, 31), and canonically that Creator is the Son "through whom all things were made" who "upholds all things by His powerful word" (John 1:3; Heb 1:3) — so to lift up our eyes and behold the star-numbering God is to behold Christ as a strength and a faithfulness so inexhaustible that He becomes desirable, not merely majestic.