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48. Stubborn Israel

¹ “Listen to this, you descendants of Jacob,
   you who are called by the name of Israel
   and come from the line of Judah,
you who take oaths in the name of the LORD
   and invoke the God of Israel—
   but not in truth or righteousness—
² you who call yourselves citizens of the holy city
   and claim to rely on the God of Israel—
   the LORD Almighty is his name:
³ I foretold the former things long ago,
   my mouth announced them and I made them known;
   then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.
⁴ For I knew how stubborn you were;
   your neck muscles were iron,
   your forehead was bronze.
⁵ Therefore I told you these things long ago;
   before they happened I announced them to you
so that you could not say,
   ‘My images brought them about;
   my wooden image and metal god ordained them.’
⁶ You have heard these things; look at them all.
   Will you not admit them?

   “From now on I will tell you of new things,
   of hidden things unknown to you.
⁷ They are created now, and not long ago;
   you have not heard of them before today.
So you cannot say,
   ‘Yes, I knew of them.’
⁸ You have neither heard nor understood;
   from of old your ears have not been open.
Well do I know how treacherous you are;
   you were called a rebel from birth.
⁹ For my own name’s sake I delay my wrath;
   for the sake of my praise I hold it back from you,
   so as not to destroy you completely.
¹⁰ See, I have refined you, though not as silver;
   I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
¹¹ For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this.
   How can I let myself be defamed?
   I will not yield my glory to another.

Israel Freed

    ¹² “Listen to me, Jacob,
   Israel, whom I have called:
I am he;
   I am the first and I am the last.
¹³ My own hand laid the foundations of the earth,
   and my right hand spread out the heavens;
when I summon them,
   they all stand up together.

    ¹⁴ “Come together, all of you, and listen:
   Which of the idols has foretold these things?
The LORD’s chosen ally
   will carry out his purpose against Babylon;
   his arm will be against the Babylonians. Or Chaldeans; also in verse 20
¹⁵ I, even I, have spoken;
   yes, I have called him.
I will bring him,
   and he will succeed in his mission.

¹⁶ “Come near me and listen to this:

“From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret;
at the time it happens, I am there.”

And now the Sovereign LORD has sent me,
endowed with his Spirit.

    ¹⁷ This is what the LORD says—
   your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
“I am the LORD your God,
   who teaches you what is best for you,
   who directs you in the way you should go.
¹⁸ If only you had paid attention to my commands,
   your peace would have been like a river,
   your well-being like the waves of the sea.
¹⁹ Your descendants would have been like the sand,
   your children like its numberless grains;
their name would never be blotted out
   nor destroyed from before me.”

    ²⁰ Leave Babylon,
   flee from the Babylonians!
Announce this with shouts of joy
   and proclaim it.
Send it out to the ends of the earth;
   say, “The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob.”
²¹ They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;
   he made water flow for them from the rock;
he split the rock
   and water gushed out.

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

7. Now for the first time have they been created. The Prophet shews that he is not reasoning about things that are known, or that have been learned by actual experience; and his object is, not merely to correct that haughtiness which is natural to all men, (for they claim for themselves what belongeth to God alone,) but likewise that no part of this event may be ascribed to fortune or to any other cause. In various ways do men rob God of the glory that is due to him, and direct all their faculties towards distributing among the creatures that which belongs to Him alone, so as to leave Him nothing but a bare and empty name. That the people might not think that they had been vanquished by the power of the Babylonians, or that it was by human strength or by chance that they were afterwards restored to liberty, on this account he so frequently repeats and reiterates, that this is the work of God.

Thou hadst not heard those things. When he affirms that “they had not heard them,” some explain this to mean that the people rejected God’s warnings, and did not listen to good counsels. But I think that the Prophet’s meaning was different, namely, that what could not be known by human sagacity, and what had been unknown to the Jews, has been revealed in such a manner that they cannot defraud the Holy Spirit of the praise which is due to him; and this is very evident from the context.