Isaiah 48:5

Verse 1 opens with a summons, “Hear ye this,” and every name God gives his people in it is an honour. They are the house of Jacob, they are called by the name of Israel, and they have come out of the waters of Judah. The name Jacob, Yaʻăqôb, comes from ʻâqab and means “heel-catcher” or “supplanter”. It calls to mind the patriarch and the covenant God made with him, and it also fits a people who are still struggling against God, much as their forefather once did. “House of Jacob” and “Israel” are two names for the one people, and both recall the relationship God began with their fathers.

“Come forth out of the waters of Judah” is a picture of their origin. They descend from Judah, the leading tribe of the southern kingdom and the royal tribe from which David’s line and the Messiah would come. The picture may draw on the land of Judah, or on a people springing from the nation as a stream springs from its source. Either way it names a rich inheritance, and the rest of the verse shows how poorly they kept it.

They also had the language of faith. They swore by the name of the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, and made mention of the God of Israel, Elohim, in their prayers, their praises and their talk. An oath in the LORD’s name was a solemn covenant act and a public declaration of allegiance. Yet all of it was done “not in truth, nor in righteousness.” The word for truth, ʼemeth, comes from ʼâman and means stability, certainty and truth, the steadiness that makes a person’s word worth trusting. Righteousness, tsᵉdâqâh, from tsâdaq, is rightness and justice, a life that matches God’s own standard. Israel spoke God’s name with their lips while their hearts and lives belonged elsewhere, and their oaths were empty.

Verse 2 adds the claims they leaned on. “They call themselves of the holy city”: they took their identity from Jerusalem, the city God had set apart, as if living near holiness made them holy. The verb qârâʼ means to call out, to address by name or to proclaim, and here it is the name they gave themselves. They also “stay themselves upon the God of Israel”. To stay, çâmak, is to prop up, to lean on or to sustain. Leaning on God is good in itself. These people leaned on their covenant status and on what he had done for them in the past, as though it guaranteed his favour, while they withheld the obedience and humble trust he asked for. That kind of leaning gave them only false comfort.

The prophets brought this charge again and again. God rejects empty ritual in Isaiah’s first chapter (Isaiah 1:11–17). Through Amos he despises Israel’s feasts and asks for justice (Amos 5:21–24), and through Malachi he rebukes priests who despise his name (Malachi 1:6–8). Jeremiah warned people who trusted in the temple while they went on sinning (Jeremiah 7:4–11). Jesus spoke of people who honour God with their lips while their heart is far from him (Matthew 15:8), and he pronounced woes on scribes and Pharisees whose piety was all on the outside (Matthew 23:27–28). When his hearers leaned on Abraham as their father, he answered them in the same way (John 8:39–44). Paul writes of people who profess to know God and deny him by their works (Titus 1:16), and he says that the true Jew is one inwardly, whose circumcision is of the heart (Romans 2:28–29). Behind all of these stands David’s confession that God desires truth in the inward parts (Psalm 51:6).

In verse 3 God turns from the people to himself. “I have declared the former things from the beginning.” The former things, riʼshôwn (from riʼshâh), are the first or previous things, and the plural, riʼshôwnôt, means the events God had already announced and then brought about: the Exodus from Egypt, the making of Israel a nation, his judgments on the nations around them, and the rise of empires such as Assyria and Babylon, all foretold by earlier prophets. To declare, nâgad, is to stand out in front of someone and make a thing known, to announce or predict it by word of mouth to someone present. These words “went forth out of my mouth,” from God himself, and “I shewed them” means he made them plain, so that his people and the nations could watch them come true.

Then comes the doing: “I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.” Pithʼôwm means instantly or straightway. When God’s time came, he acted at once, often beyond anything people expected, and everything he had said happened. With God, saying and doing go together. Isaiah has already recorded his challenge, “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” (Isaiah 46:9–10). His word accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11), his counsel stands for ever (Psalm 33:11), and Daniel confesses a God in heaven who reveals mysteries and makes known what is to come (Daniel 2:28). The timing belongs to him, for with the Lord a thousand years are as one day (2 Peter 3:8). The law tested a prophet by whether his word came to pass (Deuteronomy 18:21–22), and God meets that test in full. Because his past words have all come true, his promises still to come are just as sure.

Verse 6 turns back to the people with a question. “Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it?” They had heard God’s word through his prophets and seen it come true. The verb for hearing, shâmaʻ, is the one used in verse 5, and it carries the sense of listening with attention and, often, with obedience. “Declare” is nâgad once more. God had declared, and now he asks why his people will not declare in turn. They had the evidence in front of them, yet they kept silent when they should have been his witnesses among the nations. Jeremiah grieved over the same stubborn and rebellious heart (Jeremiah 5:23), and Jesus gave his disciples the calling Israel had left unfilled: “ye shall be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:8).

Then God goes further: “I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them.” New, châdâsh, means new or fresh, something recently made or different from what came before. The hidden things, from nâtsar, are things guarded, kept back and reserved, which God held in his own keeping until his time to reveal them. “From this time” marks the moment of that revealing. To know, yâdaʻ, covers knowing by observation, experience, recognition and close acquaintance, and Israel had known none of this.

Verse 7 explains why. “They are created now, and not from the beginning.” The verb is bârâʼ, to create, the word for God’s own work of bringing something into being. These are fresh works of God, brought about by his will at the time he chose, much as he brought about creation itself. “Even before the day when thou heardest them not”: the day, yôwm, here means the time of the revealing, and until then Israel had heard nothing of them at all. “Lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them.” Verse 5 kept the idols from taking credit for the former things, and verse 7 keeps God’s people from taking credit for foreseeing the new ones. Both guard his glory, and both strip away every excuse.

Moses had said, “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29). Jesus spoke the same way to his disciples before his betrayal: “Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he” (John 13:19).

Verse 8 gathers the charge into one sentence. “Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened.” The word “yea” is gam, “indeed” or “surely”, and saying it three times presses the charge home. “Heardest” is shâmaʻ again, and “knewest” is yâdaʻ, the verb of verses 6 and 7. Israel’s hearing lacked attention and obedience, and their knowing lacked the acknowledgment of God and the close covenant relationship he offered. “Thine ear was not opened” uses pâthach, to open wide or unstop. A closed ear is a picture of a heart shut against God’s instruction and correction, and “from that time” shows how long it had been shut.

The reason follows: “for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously.” To deal treacherously, bâgad, is to act covertly, deceitfully or unfaithfully. The Hebrew says it twice, bagod tivgod, using a form called the infinitive absolute that makes the verb stronger, and the KJV gives the force of it with “very treacherously”. It speaks of the certainty and depth of their disloyalty, a settled bent toward breaking covenant.

“And wast called a transgressor from the womb.” “Called” is qârâʼ, the same verb as in verse 2. There Israel called itself after the holy city, and here God gives his people their true name. Transgressor, pâshaʻ, is a strong word for rebellion: to break away from rightful authority, to trespass, to revolt. The womb, beṭen, is the belly, and especially the womb, and here it stands for the nation’s earliest beginnings. From the wilderness onward (Deuteronomy 9:7) to the exile, Israel showed the same pattern of unfaithfulness in spite of God’s warnings and his mighty acts.

Every charge in these verses finds its answer in Jesus Christ. Israel used the LORD’s name “not in truth, nor in righteousness”. Jesus, the true and faithful Israel, came to fulfil all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), lived in perfect integrity, and died as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Through him God’s people worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24), and in him they are made the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Israel called itself after the holy city, and Scripture ends with the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God, where he dwells with his people (Revelation 21:2–3).

Israel’s neck was an iron sinew. Christ was obedient to the Father even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:8), and through his sacrifice God keeps his promise of a new heart and a new spirit, a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26–27). When a person turns to the Lord the veil is taken away (2 Corinthians 3:16), and the new covenant is written on the heart (Hebrews 10:16). Israel’s ear was closed. Jesus always did what pleased his Father (John 8:29), he was without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and the people said of him that he makes the deaf to hear (Mark 7:37). By his Spirit he gives his people new hearts and opened ears.

The former things come to their fullest answer in him as well. From the beginning God promised a seed who would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15), a prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15), a suffering servant (Isaiah 53) and a king from David’s line (2 Samuel 7:12), and the risen Jesus opened these Scriptures to his disciples (Luke 24:44). When the fulfilment came it often came suddenly, as when the angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds (Luke 2:9) and when the women found the tomb empty (Matthew 28:6). The Word was made flesh (John 1:14), the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), by whom all things were created and hold together (Colossians 1:16–17), and in whom God has spoken to us at last (Hebrews 1:1–2). He was foreordained before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20), and he is the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:8). Against every idol stands the confession that there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 8:4–6).

The new things reach their fullness in the gospel. The new covenant has come in Christ and has made the first one old (Hebrews 8:13). The mystery hidden from ages and generations is now made known to his saints (Colossians 1:26), anyone in Christ is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17), and he has opened a new and living way to God (Hebrews 10:20). Salvation itself is kept wholly God’s work, for the same reason God gave in verse 7: “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). And the question “will not ye declare it?” becomes the church’s commission, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19), carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4).

These are hard words, and they are also a gift. They show us a God who looks past names, places and religious language to the heart, and who asks for truth and righteousness there. They show us that every word he has spoken has come to pass, so the promises he has made to us are certain. When good things come into our lives, verse 5 tells us whose hand brought them. And they show a God who knew the worst about his people before he ever spoke to them, and who spoke to them anyway, with new things and with the promise of redemption for his own name’s sake. In Christ that same God gives new hearts and opened ears, and he sends those who have heard and seen out to declare it.