Isaiah 48

This chapter concludes the section dealing with Babylon and Cyrus within the prophecies of comfort and restoration that begin in Isaiah 40. Following Isaiah 47, which celebrates the fall of Babylon, this chapter commands Israel to leave Babylon.

Outline

• Verses 1–2 God addresses the house of Jacob, which is called by the name of Israel and swears by the name of the LORD, yet lacks truth and righteousness. The Korean Revised Version (Gaeyeok Hangeul) renders verses 1 and 2 as a single verse.
• Verses 3–5 God announced events before they came to pass, so that the people could not credit them to their idols. The people's neck is said to be "an iron sinew" and their brow "brass."
• Verses 6–8 God now shows them new things they had not known. The people were called "a transgressor from the womb."
• Verses 9–11 For His own name's sake God defers His anger and does not cut off His people. He has chosen them in the furnace of affliction, and He will not give His glory to another.
• Verses 12–13 God declares that He is the first and the last, the Creator who laid the foundation of the earth and spread out the heavens.
• Verses 14–16 The one whom the LORD loves will do His pleasure on Babylon and strike the Chaldeans. At the end of verse 16 the speaker says that the Lord GOD has sent him and His Spirit (the KJV reads, "the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me").
• Verses 17–19 God the Redeemer laments that had the people hearkened to His commandments, their peace would have been like a river, their righteousness like the waves of the sea, and their offspring like the sand.
• Verses 20–21 The people are commanded to go forth from Babylon and to proclaim to the end of the earth that the LORD has redeemed Jacob. The passage recalls how God made water flow from the rock in the wilderness.
• Verse 22 The chapter closes with the words "There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked."

Key Verses

• Isaiah 48:10 "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" — interprets the suffering of exile as a process of refining.
• Isaiah 48:12 "I am the first, I also am the last" — an expression affirming God's sovereignty over the whole of history.
• Isaiah 48:18 "Then had thy peace been as a river" — expresses the consequences of disobedience as God's lament.

People and Places

• Jacob: Here the name refers not to the patriarch as an individual but to his descendants, the people of Israel as a whole.
• Babylon: The empire to which the people of Judah had been carried away captive.
• Chaldeans: The leading people who established the Babylonian Empire; the term is also used to refer to the Babylonians in general.
• Jerusalem: The city referred to as "the holy city" in verses 1–2.

Points for Reflection

• "The one whom the LORD loves" in verse 14 is not named in the text. Many commentators identify him as Cyrus, who is named in 44:28 and 45:1.
• Interpretations differ as to the identity of the "me" in the latter part of verse 16. Some take it to be the prophet himself, while others take it to be the Servant who speaks from Isaiah 49 onward. Some Christian interpreters read this verse, in which "the Lord GOD," "me," and "his Spirit" appear together, as an intimation of the Trinity.
• In critical scholarship, chapters 40–55 are sometimes called "Second Isaiah" (Deutero-Isaiah) and regarded as the work of another prophet active near the end of the exile. Conservative evangelicals regard them as the prophecy of Isaiah himself.
• Nearly the same words as verse 22 appear again in 57:21. For this reason some interpreters regard the verse as a marker closing the section of chapters 40–48.
• The chapter also connects with the New Testament. "The first and the last" is linked to the Alpha and Omega language of Revelation 1:17 and 22:13. The command in verse 20, "Go ye forth of Babylon," is read together with Revelation 18:4. The water from the rock in verse 21 refers to the wilderness events of the Exodus, and Paul connects this rock episode with Christ in 1 Corinthians 10:4.