Deliverance Promised to Israel

The LORD summons Jacob to listen to the One who is first and last, whose hand founded earth and spread out the heavens. He challenges the assembled listeners to identify any rival deity who announced these things, declares that He has spoken and called the one who will accomplish His pleasure against Babylon, and then urges Israel to come near and hear the word that from the beginning has not been spoken in secret, culminating in the declaration that the Lord GOD has sent Him, and His Spirit.

L¹²isten to Me, O Jacob, ¹³Surely My own hand founded the earth, ¹⁴Come together, all of you, and listen: ¹⁵I, even I, have spoken; ¹⁶Come near to Me and listen to this:

The LORD, Israel's Redeemer and Holy One, identifies Himself as the One who teaches them for profit and leads them in the way they should go. He laments that if they had paid attention to His commandments their peace would have flowed like a river and their righteousness like the waves of the sea, with descendants too numerous to be cut off before Him.

¹⁷Thus says the LORD your Redeemer, ¹⁸If only you had paid attention to My commandments, ¹⁹Your descendants would have been as countless as the sand,

Israel is commanded to leave Babylon and proclaim with joyful shouting that the LORD has redeemed His servant Jacob. The God who provided water from the rock in the wilderness will again sustain His people as they depart, but the chapter closes by drawing a moral line through the promise: no such peace belongs to the wicked.

²⁰Leave Babylon! ²¹They did not thirst when He led them through the deserts; ²²“There is no peace,” says the LORD,