Isaiah study & commentary

Isaiah 48:1-2

 ¹ "Hear this, O house of Jacob,
      Who are called by the name of Israel,
      And have come forth from the wellsprings of Judah;
      Who swear by the name of the LORD,
      And make mention of the God of Israel,
      But not in truth or in righteousness;

          ²For they call themselves after the holy city,
      And lean on the God of Israel;
      The LORD of hosts is His name:
Isaiah calls to the house of Jacob and they are called by the name of Israel.  By name, they are God's chosen people and they swear by the name of the Lord.  They say they are God's people but they weren't living like it, acting like it or pursuing after their God.  By implication, they swore by the Lord in spoke of God in untruth and unrighteousness.  Hypocrisy was all too common throughout the history of Israel.  They were Israelites by name but in their heart they were far from God.   

Isaiah 48:3-5

³" I have declared the former things from the beginning;
      They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it.
      Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
       ⁴ Because I knew that you were obstinate,
      And your neck was an iron sinew,
      And your brow bronze,
       ⁵ Even from the beginning I have declared it to you;
      Before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you,
      Lest you should say, 'My idol has done them,
      And my carved image and my molded image
      Have commanded them.'
God is sovereign and ordains all of history.  From the beginning, He has given prophecy of events in history and they have come about.  God spoke prophecy through people in a way that was heard.  Then He did them and brought them to pass, in His time.  He did this so they could not attest the acts of the Living God to their false idols.  God knew His people were stiff-necked and obstinate.  He was never surprised at this.        

Isaiah 48:6-8

⁶" You have heard;
      See all this.
      And will you not declare it?
      I have made you hear new things from this time,
      Even hidden things, and you did not know them.
       ⁷ They are created now and not from the beginning;
      And before this day you have not heard them,
      Lest you should say, 'Of course I knew them.'
       ⁸ Surely you did not hear,
      Surely you did not know;
      Surely from long ago your ear was not opened.
      For I knew that you would deal very treacherously,
      And were called a transgressor from the womb.
The Lord is declaring through Isaiah a new thing.  The prophecies turn more toward the Messiah's first and second coming.  Babylon seems to be referenced more in an end times prophecy and not Isaiah's time.  The millennial kingdom is more in view than the current times.  These things had not been heard before this day.  God knew from the beginning that Israel would continually be a problem.  From the womb, from birth, they were sinners……as we all are.  The new thing is the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, the remedy of sin.

Isaiah 48:9-11

⁹ " For My name's sake I will defer My anger,
      And for My praise I will restrain it from you,
      So that I do not cut you off.
       ¹⁰ Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
      I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
       ¹¹ For My own sake, for My own sake, I will do it;
      For how should My name be profaned?
      And I will not give My glory to another.

God is just and holy and by his very nature could rightly bring His wrath on the nation of Israel.  There was nothing special about them that they should deserve God's patience.  But God chose them to reveal Himself to the world.  If they were to be cut off, His name would be defamed.  So, over time, Israel is refined in the furnace of affliction.  For God's sake, for His name and for His glory, He continues to perfect the nation.

Isaiah 48:12-13

¹²" Listen to Me, O Jacob,
      And Israel, My called:
      I am He, I am the First,
      I am also the Last.
       ¹³ Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth,
      And My right hand has stretched out the heavens;
      When I call to them,
      They stand up together.
Once again, God reminds His people through Isaiah that He is the voice of the burning bush.  He is the "I AM" that every Jew would recognize as God.  He is the first and last and from the beginning he created the heavens and the earth.  God "stretched" out the heavens.  What an amazing thought and an incredible sight that must have been.      

Isaiah 48:14-16

¹⁴" All of you, assemble yourselves, and hear!
      Who among them has declared these things?
      The LORD loves him;
      He shall do His pleasure on Babylon,
      And His arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
      ¹⁵ I, even I, have spoken;
      Yes, I have called him,
      I have brought him, and his way will prosper.
       ¹⁶ " Come near to Me, hear this:
      I have not spoken in secret from the beginning;
      From the time that it was, I was there.
      And now the Lord GOD and His Spirit
      Have sent Me."
The Lord calls for an assembly to hear.  God the Father loves Him, the messiah.  He will do as he pleases on Babylon.  This Babylon is the world system of the end times.  It may well be a literal Babylon as spoken about in Revelation by John.  Jesus Christ will come forth at the appointed time of the end.  His will shall be done.  God the son, Jesus Christ has always been.  He was in the beginning (John 1).  The last part of the verse 16 seems to be the voice of Jesus saying, "The Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me."  This verse clearly supports a Trinitarian view.      

Isaiah 48:17

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 by the way you should go.
       ¹⁸ Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!
      Then your peace would have been like a river,
      And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
       ¹⁹ Your descendants also would have been like the sand,
      And the offspring of your body like the grains of sand;
      His name would not have been cut off
      Nor destroyed from before Me."
       ²⁰ Go forth from Babylon!
      Flee from the Chaldeans!
      With a voice of singing,
      Declare, proclaim this,
      Utter it to the end of the earth;
      Say, "The LORD has redeemed
      His servant Jacob!"
       ²¹ And they did not thirst
      When He led them through the deserts;
      He caused the waters to flow from the rock for them;
      He also split the rock, and the waters gushed out.
       ²² " There is no peace," says the LORD, "for the wicked."

The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel has been leading Israel from the beginning.  He teaches them, corrects them and leads them in the way they should go.  It would have been a very different course had they heeded His ways and followed His commandments.  Peace and righteousness would have been a way of life as they experienced it like the endless from of the sea and the continual waves of the sea.  The promises of the Abrahamic covenant would have brought a great many descendants.  Even though they spent time in a Babylon and the diaspora until 1948, they are still Israel and still in the hands of God.  A day is coming when they will turn back to the Lord.  They will separate themselves from Babylonian system.  They will be saved by the Lord in the time of Jacob's trouble (Jeremiah 30:7).  The Lord will redeem them and deliver them.  He will be their provision as he was in the desert when He delivered them from Egypt.