Isaiah 48:12-22--The LORD's Call to Israel

Isaiah 48:12-22
English Standard Version

The LORD's Call to Israel
12 “Listen to me, O Jacob,
    and Israel, whom I called!
I am he; I am the first,
    and I am the last.
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.

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.”

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God starts off His call to the people of Israel reminding them that He Elected them and Redeemed them for a special purpose that He knows and is bringing about.  He is also the one who created everything (including them) and the one who sustains all things (including them).

The LORD reminds His people the come together and worship Him even though He has declared judgment on them.  He also reminds them that Babylon will not get away with the evil that they have done--they too will eventually be punished, but He is going to use them for a time to bring about His purposes for His people.  Isaiah through the Spirit of the Lord is crying out to the people to listen to Him as if they were listening to the voice of the LORD Himself.

The LORD's prophecy is for the good of His people, instructing them in the way that is good and profitable for them.  He has their best interest in mind, even more than they do.  We don't always know what is best for us, but He always does.  The LORD wishes that His people had obeyed His commandments and kept the Mosaic Covenant so that it would go well with them, but now they will have to experience the curses of the Law instead of the blessings of the Law.  The LORD repeats the promise of descendants and doesn't say that it won't happen that they would be too numerous to count, but He says that promise would have been fulfilled by this time if they would have been obedient.  However, the fulfillment of that promise had to be delayed because of their disobedience.

When the day comes when the LORD once again redeems His people from their captivity in Babylon, He asks for them to remember that He alone has saved and redeemed them and for them to let out a shout of praise and worship Him for the mighty way in which He acted.  His care for them once again will be supernatural so that they will need or want nothing, and all will be paid for by those that have taken them into captivity.  However, the enemies of the LORD's people will be destroyed (think of the story of Esther and the feat of Purim which is celebrated like a second Passover where the LORD's people once again experienced His miraculous salvation and the LORD's enemies experienced His fierce wrath and judgment).