The Lord’s Call to Israel (ISA 48:12-22)

[48:12] “Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last.

[48:13] My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together.

[48:14] “Assemble, all of you, and listen! 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.

[48:15] I, even I, have spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.

[48:16] Draw 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.

[48:17] Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.

[48:18] Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;

[48:19] your 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.”

[48:20] Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it out to the end of the earth; say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!”

[48:21] 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 the water gushed out.

[48:22] “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”