Isaiah 48:18

Isaiah 40–55 is often called the Book of Comfort, and it speaks to Israel in the Babylonian exile (586 to 538 BC). Jerusalem and its temple lay in ruins, the people lived under foreign rule, and the prophets had taught them to understand this as God’s judgment on generations of idolatry, injustice and broken covenant. Around them stood the many gods of Babylon, with their astrology, divination and secret rites, and the exiles were tempted to wonder whether the LORD still had the power or the will to help them.

Chapter 48 closes the first part of the Book of Comfort. In it the LORD confronts Israel’s stubbornness (Isaiah 48:1–8), reminds them that he alone declares the future and brings it to pass, and speaks of the one he has raised up to deal with Babylon. Our four verses come near the end of that speech. A summons to come near and listen is followed by one of the tenderest sentences in the book, and straight after it comes the call to go forth from Babylon (Isaiah 48:20). So even while he judges, God is opening the road home.

The verse opens with a summons: “Come ye near unto me, hear ye this.” The verb for hearing, shâmaʻ, carries the sense of listening so as to understand and obey, which is exactly what the earlier part of the chapter says Israel had failed to do.

What they are to hear is that God has always spoken openly. The word for “secret”, çêther, comes from a root meaning to cover, and it names a hiding place or something done in private. The gods of Babylon were consulted through obscure oracles and hidden rituals. The LORD spoke in public, in words that could be heard, remembered and then tested against what happened, and his fulfilled prophecies are the proof the chapter has been pressing. A God who speaks this way can be trusted, and his word can be read with confidence that it was given to be understood.

“From the time that it was, there am I” adds that the speaker was present when these things began. He has been there through the whole course of what he foretold, so he speaks as one who saw it all from the start.

The verse ends with a change that has drawn attention for as long as it has been read: “and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.” Up to this point the voice has been God’s own. Now someone speaks who has been there “from the beginning” and yet is sent by another.

The one who speaks is the Servant of the LORD, the Messiah, heard here before his coming. He was present from the beginning, and he comes with a commission from the Lord GOD and his Spirit. Isaiah has already introduced this Servant (Isaiah 42:1–4), and here the Servant speaks for himself. Believers differ on the last line, and some hold that the prophet Isaiah steps forward in it to say that God has sent him with this message. On either reading the words are fulfilled in Christ, who is the one truly sent.

The names in the line are worth noticing. “The Lord GOD” is ʼĂdônây Yᵉhôvih, the sovereign Lord named together with the covenant name. “His Spirit” is rûwach, a word whose senses are wind, breath and spirit, and here it is the Holy Spirit, acting together with the Lord GOD. “Sent” is shâlach, the ordinary verb for sending someone out, and it tells us that the speaker comes under authority and with a mission given to him. So one verse of the Old Testament names the Lord GOD, his Spirit and the one they send. It is among the clearest places in the Old Testament where we glimpse what the New Testament reveals fully, that the one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Each part of the verse is taken up in John’s Gospel. Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning with God and through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3). He taught openly throughout his ministry (John 18:20). And he said of himself, “I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me” (John 8:42). The Father sends the Son, and the Father and the Son send the Spirit (John 14:26, John 15:26). The plan to save was God’s from eternity, and Father, Son and Spirit carry it out together.

Verse 17 begins with “Thus saith the LORD”, the prophets’ way of saying that what follows is God’s own word, and then it gathers several names for him. Each one tells Israel something about who is speaking to them.

“Redeemer” comes from gâʼal, the verb for acting as the next of kin. In Israel the kinsman-redeemer, the go’el, was the relative with the duty to buy back a family member’s lost property, to free him from bondage, or to see justice done for his blood. For exiles who had lost land, liberty and honour, this name said that the LORD counted himself their nearest relative and had taken on himself the duty of bringing them back. He had said as much earlier in the book, where he tells Israel that he has redeemed them and called them by name (Isaiah 43:1–7).

“The Holy One of Israel” sets beside that closeness his purity. He is set apart from every idol, morally perfect, and yet he binds himself to this one people and lets his name be joined to theirs. The LORD who is the first and the last, beside whom there is no God (Isaiah 44:6–8), is also “the LORD thy God”. The one who rules everything is theirs, and what he tells them comes from holy and faithful intentions.

Jesus bears these names in full. He is the Redeemer who ransomed us from sin and death with his own precious blood (1 Peter 1:18–19), and he is the Holy One, tempted as we are and yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

It means that everything God teaches his people is for their real benefit. The verb yâʻal means to be of use, to be valuable, to do good to someone. The profit in view is true advantage and well-being, a life that is useful and right before God, and material gain is only a small part of what the word can cover. God’s instruction is given by one who knows what a human life is for.

The verb for teaching, lâmad, means to teach, instruct or train, that is, to cause someone to learn. God is the one doing it, patiently and personally: “I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee.” He promises the same elsewhere, to instruct us and teach us in the way we should go (Psalm 32:8). The alternative is described in Proverbs, where a way can look right to a man while its end is death (Proverbs 14:12).

Jesus is this teacher come among us. Peter said that he has the words of eternal life (John 6:68), and Jesus said that he came so that his sheep might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

Verse 18 opens with a cry. The little Hebrew word lûʼ, “O that”, expresses a strong wish, often for something that did not happen. God is telling Israel what he longed for them to have done. It is close to the way a father speaks to a child he loves, and it comes in the middle of a chapter of accusation.

To hearken, qâshab, means to listen attentively, to pay attention. Literally it is to incline the ears, and it includes heeding what is heard. What Israel should have attended to were God’s commandments, his mitsvâh, the instructions for covenant life given at Sinai (Exodus 20). The law itself had set the two roads before them, with blessings for obedience (Deuteronomy 28:1–2) and the consequences of disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15). Isaiah had opened his book on the same note: the willing and obedient would eat the good of the land, and those who refused and rebelled would be devoured by the sword (Isaiah 1:19–20). The exile was the second road, and Israel’s suffering came from their own choices while God’s love and provision stood ready the whole time.

The same teaching runs through the rest of Scripture. The man who delights in the law of the LORD is like a tree planted by rivers of water (Psalm 1:1–3), and Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount with the wise man who hears his sayings and does them, whose house stands on rock when the flood comes (Matthew 7:24–27).

God names two blessings that obedience would have brought, and he gives each a picture taken from water.

Peace is shâlôwm, a state of completeness, soundness, welfare, peace and safety. It covers the whole of life: body and soul, home and nation, a person’s standing with God and with his neighbours. This peace would have been “as a river”, nâhâr. The exiles lived beside the great rivers of Babylon, the Euphrates and the Tigris, and knew what a river meant: water that keeps coming, season after season, and makes the land around it live. Their peace would have been like that, steady, deep and always arriving.

Righteousness is tsᵉdâqâh. It includes both a right standing with God and right conduct towards others, lives marked by integrity and justice. This would have been “as the waves of the sea”, the gal of the yâm. Waves are countless, they come without ceasing, and they are strong. So the two pictures say different things. The river speaks of peace that is constant and life-giving, and the waves speak of righteousness that is abundant and powerful, rolling in one upon another. Both blessings would have come from the same source, a people listening to their God.

Verse 19 carries the lament further, to Israel’s children and Israel’s name.

“Seed”, zeraʻ, is the word for what is sown, and so for offspring and descendants. “As the sand” takes Israel back to the promises made to their fathers. God told Abraham that he would multiply his seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the seashore (Genesis 22:17), and earlier that his seed would be as the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:16). “The offspring of thy bowels” is a warm, bodily way of saying one’s own children, and “like the gravel thereof” says the same thing again with the grains of that sand. The exiles were few and humiliated, and here God tells them what their numbers would have been.

The second blessing is a name. In Israel a name meant a family’s identity and lasting place, the line that carried on, and to lose it was to vanish as a people. That fear pressed hard on exiles in danger of being absorbed into Babylon. Two verbs describe the loss. Kârath means to cut, to cut off or cut down, and it is also the verb used for making a covenant, which Hebrew speaks of as “cutting” a covenant, from the old practice of cutting animals and passing between the pieces. Shâmad means to destroy. Set side by side they describe a people brought to an end. “From before me” places all this in God’s presence: an obedient Israel would have lived on securely in his sight, with its name never once in danger.

Israel’s history shows what is true of all of us. We have failed to hearken, and by our own obedience the river of peace and the waves of righteousness stay out of reach. The passage leaves us needing someone who would listen to God perfectly.

Jesus is that one. He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17) and lived in complete obedience to the Father. By his death and resurrection he became our peace, breaking down the wall that stood between us and God (Ephesians 2:14). The righteousness Israel could never produce is now given through faith in him (Romans 3:21–22), for he who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). The peace of verse 18 is ours in Christ as a gift of grace (Philippians 4:7), and by the Holy Spirit our lives come more and more to show the righteousness we have been given.

The promises of verse 19 are kept in him as well. Paul says that the seed promised to Abraham is Christ (Galatians 3:16), and that all who belong to Christ, Jew and Gentile alike, are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29). This is the new covenant that Jeremiah foretold (Jeremiah 31:31–34) and Hebrews explains (Hebrews 8:8–12), resting on Christ’s obedience and the work of the Spirit in the heart. His name stands before God for ever, because he lives for ever and holds an unchangeable priesthood (Hebrews 7:24), and the names of those who are joined to him are safe with his.

These verses tell us that God’s commands come from his love. He is our Redeemer before he is our teacher, and he teaches for our profit. When his way is hard, or runs against what everyone around us calls wise, verse 17 gives the reason to follow it: the one leading knows the road and wants our good.

They also show us his heart when we go wrong. He takes no pleasure in what our disobedience costs us. He says “O that thou hadst hearkened” as one who wanted to give far more than we were willing to receive, and that longing is still his towards his people. Where we have closed our ears, the same voice that grieves also says “Come ye near unto me”, and in Christ the peace and the righteousness of these verses are held out to everyone who comes.

And the passage steadies us about his word. He has spoken in the open from the beginning, he has kept what he promised to Abraham through every failure of Abraham’s children, and he sent his Son as he said he would. A God who speaks like this, and keeps his word like this, is one whose teaching can be trusted with a whole life.