Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa Isaias 44:6

לא יהיה לך אלוהים אחרים על פני, “You are not to have any other deities in My presence.” We are not to accept any of G’d’s agents, forces, known as Elohim as deities for ourselves, nor any of the horoscopes as guiding our fates. The word אחרים “others,” [which might suggest that there are such. Ed.] is explained in Sifri Eikev section 43 as justified by the fact that they are “different, false” to those who serve them.
Another explanation of the meaning of the word אחרים: the deities whom people serve differ from day to day or from year to year. One day they worship gold, another day they worship silver, a third day they worship wood. The principal reason they are called אחרים is that they derive whatever power they are presumed to possess from אחרים, from “other” sources, they have absolutely no power of their own. This is spelled out in Exodus 34,14, לא תשתחוה לאל אחר, “do not worship a deity which derives its power from another (alien) source!” You are to bow down, i.e. worship only the true source of power, the G’d of Israel who does not derive His power from an external source. This is also the way our sages (Shir Hashirim Rabbah 1,45) interpret Isaiah 44,6 ומבלעדי אין אלו-הים, “there is no god that exists independently of Me.”

The seal of the Holy One of Blessing is Truth - the middle one of the letters [of the Hebrew alphabet], and the first and the last, which indicates "I am first, and I am last, and I am all that there is" (cf. Isaiah 44:6 and Isaiah 48:12)

A kabbalistic approach: it is well known what the power of a king consists of, seeing he is perceived as the fourth leg of the merkavah, the “chariot supporting the Shechinah, i.e. he represents the emanation מלכות. The concept of the merkavah is comprised of the three “crowns,” כתרים, i.e. the heads, (like the highest emanationכתר). In that concept the “crowns” are the patriarchs who support three “legs” of that “chariot.” (the lowest in the list of ten emanations is מלכות, “kingdom,” whereas the highest is כתר, “crown”) A king of Israel is supposed to act as this fourth leg of the merkavah, i.e. מלכות which is also known as צדק. We have an explicit verse in Isaiah 32,1 הן לצדק ימלך מלך, i.e. that the purpose of a king’s rule is to ensure righteousness and fairness in his kingdom. Concerning such a kingdom (king) David said in Psalms 118,22: “a stone which had been rejected by the builders (as useless) has become the ‘chief cornerstone’.” This is the stone which completes the whole building. The “builders” who had rejected this stone are the אבות, the patriarchs, who were on such a high spiritual level, (higher emanations) that they did not think they needed that emanation מלכות, “kingdom,” and what it represents. In order for David to turn the stone which the builders had rejected into something fit to support the merkavah, he took excess spiritual values of the various patriarchs and distributed that excess to form part of the emanation מלכות, so that the excess plus the “king” together would form the fourth leg of the מרכבה, “the chariot” which supports the Shechinah.
Even though the king symbolizes a higher level than the emanation מלכות, we do find that on occasion מלכות is equated with מלך such as in Isaiah 44,6 מלך ישראל וגואלו ה' צבאות, כה אמר ה', “thus says the Lord, the king of Israel and its redeemer the Lord of hosts,” as well as in Psalms 145,1 ארוממך אלוהי המלך, “I wish to exalt my G’d the King.” In both of these instances the concept of מלכות (represented by an attribute of G’d) is elevated to the level of מלך. When the word אלוהי in Psalms 145 is spelled with the letter ו, (something most unusual) this shows that the attribute of G’d meant by this word had to be “elevated, raised in spiritual stature” in order to be on the same level as מלך.
All the foregoing shows that the appointment of a king over the people of Israel is to be viewed as a positive development, a step in raising the Jewish people as a whole to a higher spiritual level. The proviso is that such an appointment is meant to further the interest of G’d, of heaven, not G’d forbid, to further the secular ambitions of the people.
We might have thought that the meaning of the words שום תשים, may either be “elect” or “appoint.” Actually, it is derived from סם, “quintessence, an elixir,” and hints to us that the king is supposed to be the elixir of life. Alternatively, -if the king does not live up to his task- he can turn into being the סם המות, the elixir of death, seeing he is the quintessence of everything. The repetition of the words שום תשים then are an allusion to the dual role of a king, depending on his character. If he is appointed from a sincere desire to advance the spiritual level of the Jewish people he will be an elixir of life, if not, G’d forbid, he will symbolize the opposite.