Isaiah 44:6
Isaiah 44:66Thus says the LORD, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.
is one of the most-cited verses in JW monotheism arguments: "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no God." JWs use it as the OT companion to the Shema and to , locking in the position that Jehovah alone is God and that the title "the first and the last" belongs exclusively to him. The verse is the pivot in the JW response to the NWT's "a god" rendering at : if the Word was a god, then there would be a god besides Jehovah — which forbids. JWs typically resolve this by saying Jesus is "a god" only in a qualified sense, which is precisely the point Trinitarians press them on.
is the strongest available proof of strict OT monotheism — and that is exactly why the NT writers' application of its core title to Jesus is so striking. Jehovah declares "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no God." The risen Jesus then claims the same title in his own voice three times in Revelation: "I am the First and the Last" (Rev 1:17), "the First and the Last" (Rev 2:8), and "the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (Rev 22:13). At Rev 22:16 the speaker self-identifies as "I, Jesus" — there is no ambiguity about who is taking the title. Either Jesus has stolen a title Jehovah said belongs to him alone, or Jesus is included within the identity of Jehovah. The verse also feeds the Trinitarian trilemma against the NWT's "a god" rendering at : if Jesus is a real god distinct from Jehovah, then a god has been formed besides Jehovah, contradicting ("before me no god was formed") and ("besides me there is no God"). The only escape is that Jesus is Jehovah himself. sharpens the point: Jehovah created "alone" and "by myself," so a separate creature-Jesus serving as master worker cannot be reconciled with the OT's own monotheism.