48 ^1-2 Hear me, my people: you swear allegiance to the Lord without meaning a word of it when you boast of living in the Holy City and brag about depending on the God of Israel. ³ Time and again I told you what was going to happen in the future. My words were scarcely spoken when suddenly I did just what I said. ⁴ I knew how hard and obstinate you are. Your necks are as unbending as iron; you are as hardheaded as brass. ⁵ That is why I told you ahead of time what I was going to do, so that you could never say, “My idol did it; my carved image commanded it to happen!” ⁶ You have heard my predictions and seen them fulfilled, but you refuse to agree it is so. Now I will tell you new things I haven’t mentioned before, secrets you haven’t heard.

⁷ Then you can’t say, “We knew that all the time!”

⁸ Yes, I’ll tell you things entirely new, for I know so well what traitors you are, rebels from earliest childhood, rotten through and through. ⁹ Yet for my own sake and for the honor of my name I will hold back my anger and not wipe you out. ¹⁰ I refined you in the furnace of affliction, but found no silver there. You are worthless, with nothing good in you at all. ¹¹ Yet for my own sake—yes, for my own sake—I will save you from my anger and not destroy you lest the heathen say their gods have conquered me. I will not let them have my glory.

¹² Listen to me, my people, my chosen ones! I alone am God. I am the First; I am the Last. ¹³ It was my hand that laid the foundations of the earth; the palm of my right hand spread out the heavens above; I spoke and they came into being.

¹⁴ Come, all of you, and listen. Among all your idols, which one has ever told you this: “The Lord loves Cyrus. He will use him to put an end to the empire of Babylonia. He will utterly rout the armies of the Chaldeans”? ¹⁵ But I am saying it. I have called Cyrus; I have sent him on this errand, and I will prosper him.

¹⁶ Come closer and listen. I have always told you plainly what would happen, so that you could clearly understand. And now the Lord God and his Spirit have sent me (with this message):

¹⁷ The Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, says: I am the Lord your God, who punishes you for your own good and leads you along the paths that you should follow.

¹⁸ Oh, that you had listened to my laws! Then you would have had peace flowing like a gentle river, and great waves of righteousness. ¹⁹ Then you would have become as numerous as the sands along the seashores of the world, too many to count, and there would have been no need for your destruction.

²⁰ Yet even now, be free from your captivity! Leave Babylon, singing as you go; shout to the ends of the earth that the Lord has redeemed his servants, the Jews. ²¹ They were not thirsty when he led them through the deserts; he divided the rock, and water gushed out for them to drink. ²² But there is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked.