Isaiah 48

¹Hear this, O house of Jacob,

who are called by the name of Israel,

and who came forth from the loins of Judah;

who swear by the name of the Lord,

and invoke the God of Israel,

but not in truth or right.

²For they call themselves after the holy city,

and lean on the God of Israel;

the Lord of hosts is his name.

³The former things I declared long ago,

they went out from my mouth and I made them known;

then suddenly I did them and they came to pass.

⁴Because I know that you are obstinate,

and your neck is an iron sinew

and your forehead brass,

⁵I declared them to you from long ago,

before they came to pass I announced them to you,

so that you would not say, “My idol did them,

my carved image and my cast image commanded them.”

⁶You have heard; now see all this;

and will you not declare it?

From this time forward I make you hear new things,

hidden things that you have not known.

⁷They are created now, not long ago;

before today you have never heard of them,

so that you could not say, “I already knew them.”

⁸You have never heard, you have never known,

from of old your ear has not been opened.

For I knew that you would deal very treacherously,

and that from birth you were called a rebel.

⁹For my name’s sake I defer my anger,

for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,

so that I may not cut you off.

¹⁰See, I have refined you, but not like silver;

I have tested you in the furnace of adversity.

¹¹For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,

for why should my name be profaned?

My glory I will not give to another.

¹²Listen to me, O Jacob,

and Israel, whom I called:

I am He; I am the first,

and I am the last.

¹³My hand laid the foundation of the earth,

and my right hand spread out the heavens;

when I summon them,

they stand at attention.

¹⁴Assemble, all of you, and hear!

Who among them has declared these things?

The Lord loves him;

he shall perform his purpose on Babylon,

and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.

¹⁵I, even I, have spoken and called him,

I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.

¹⁶Draw near to me, hear this!

From the beginning I have not spoken in secret,

from the time it came to be I have been there.

And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.

¹⁷Thus says the Lord,

your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

I am the Lord your God,

who teaches you for your own good,

who leads you in the way you should go.

¹⁸O that you had paid attention to my commandments!

Then your prosperity would have been like a river,

and your success like the waves of the sea;

¹⁹your offspring would have been like the sand,

and your descendants like its grains;

their name would never be cut off

or destroyed from before me.

²⁰Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea,

declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it,

send it forth to the end of the earth;

say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!”

²¹They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;

he made water flow for them from the rock;

he split open the rock and the water gushed out.

²²“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”