Isaiah 48:3-22 ▼

3 I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I showed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.

4 Because I knew that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your brow brass;

5 I have even from the beginning declared it to you; before it came to pass I showed it you: lest you should say, My idol has done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, has commanded them.

6 You have heard, see all this; and will not you declare it? I have showed you new things from this time, even hidden things, and you did not know them.

7 They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when you heard them not; lest you should say, Behold, I knew them.

8 Yes, you heard not; yes, you knew not; yes, from that time that your ear was not opened: for I knew that you would deal very treacherously, and were called a transgressor from the womb.

9 For my name's sake will I defer my anger, and for my praise will I refrain for you, that I cut you not off.

10 Behold, I have refined you, but not with silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction.

11 For my own sake, even for my own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory to another.

12 Listen to me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.

13 My hand also has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has spanned the heavens: when I call to them, they stand up together.

14 All you, assemble yourselves, and hear; which among them has declared these things? The LORD has loved him: he will do his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans.

15 I, even I, have spoken; yes, I have called him: I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous.

16 Come you near to me, hear you this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, has sent me.

17 Thus said the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD your God which teaches you to profit, which leads you by the way that you should go.

18 O that you had listened to my commandments! then had your peace been as a river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea:

19 Your seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of your bowels like the gravel thereof; his name should not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me.

20 Go you forth of Babylon, flee you from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare you, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say you, The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob.

21 And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he split the rock also, and the waters gushed out.

22 There is no peace, said the LORD, to the wicked.