Sharper Iron — The Fifth Evangelist – Isaiah 48:1-22: Go Out From Babylon, O Israel!

³ “The former things I declared of old;
    they went out from my mouth, and I announced them;
    then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
⁴ Because I know that you are obstinate,
    and your neck is an iron sinew
    and your forehead brass,
⁵ I declared them to you from of old,
    before they came to pass I announced them to you,
lest you should say, ‘My idol did them,
    my carved image and my metal image commanded them.’

⁶ “You have heard; now see all this;
    and will you not declare it?
From this time forth I announce to you new things,
    hidden things that you have not known.
⁷ They are created now, not long ago;
    before today you have never heard of them,
    lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’
⁸ You have never heard, you have never known,
    from of old your ear has not been opened.
For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously,
    and that from before birth you were called a rebel.

⁹ “For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
    for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
    that I may not cut you off.
¹⁰ Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
    I have tried^[a] you in the furnace of affliction.
¹¹ For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
    for how should my name^[b] be profaned?
    My glory I will not give to another.

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

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.
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;
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.”

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!”
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.

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