Isaiah 41:4
Isaiah 41:44Who has performed this and carried it out, calling forth the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD—the first and the last— I am He.”
"I, Jehovah, am the First One; and with the last ones I am the same" (NWT). The Watchtower reads as a strong assertion of Jehovah's exclusive deity — only Jehovah is the First One. , where Jesus says "I am the First and the Last," is then handled separately: Jesus is given the title in a derivative or representational sense by Jehovah's grant.
's "First One... the same" is one of three Isaiah texts (with 44:6 and 48:12) where Jehovah claims the unique identity-title "the First and the Last." Revelation applies the same title three times to Jesus: 1:17 ("I am the First and the Last"), 2:8 ("the First and the Last, who became dead and came to life again"), and 22:13 ("I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and the end"). The Old Testament title that Jehovah declares uniquely his is the title the resurrected Jesus declares of himself. The doorstep form: " says only Jehovah is the First and the Last. Then Jesus says 'I am the First and the Last.' Either Jesus is contradicting Jehovah, or Jesus is the Jehovah who said it."
The NWT renders the Hebrew ani-hu (literally "I am he") as "I am the same" at (and at 43:10, 13, 25; 46:4; 48:12; 52:6). Standard English translations render "I am he" — preserving the divine-identity formula that Jesus deliberately echoes at ("if you do not believe that I am he, you will die in your sins"), 8:28, 8:58, 13:19, and 18:5-8. The NWT's "I am the same" obscures the Old Testament background to Jesus's "I am he" declarations and weakens the Christological link readers would otherwise see between Isaiah's Jehovah and John's Jesus.