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God the Creator and Redeemer

48Hear this, O house of Jacob,
   who are called by the name of Israel,
   and who came forth from the loins^* of Judah;
who swear by the name of the Lord,
   and invoke the God of Israel,
   but not in truth or right.
² For they call themselves after the holy city,
   and lean on the God of Israel;
   the Lord of hosts is his name.

³ The former things I declared long ago,
   they went out from my mouth and I made them known;
   then suddenly I did them and they came to pass.
⁴ Because I know that you are obstinate,
   and your neck is an iron sinew
   and your forehead brass,
⁵ I declared them to you from long ago,
   before they came to pass I announced them to you,
so that you would not say, ‘My idol did them,
   my carved image and my cast image commanded them.’

⁶ You have heard; now see all this;
   and will you not declare it?
From this time forward I make you hear new things,
   hidden things that you have not known.
⁷ They are created now, not long ago;
   before today you have never heard of them,
   so that you could not say, ‘I already knew them.’
⁸ You have never heard, you have never known,
   from of old your ear has not been opened.
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously,
   and that from birth you were called a rebel.

⁹ For my name’s sake I defer my anger,
   for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
   so that I may not cut you off.
¹⁰ See, I have refined you, but not like^* silver;
   I have tested you in the furnace of adversity.
¹¹ For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
   for why should my name^* be profaned?
   My glory I will not give to another.

¹² Listen to me, O Jacob,
   and Israel, whom I called:
I am He; I am the first,
   and I am the last.
¹³ My hand laid the foundation of the earth,
   and my right hand spread out the heavens;
when I summon them,
   they stand at attention.

¹⁴ Assemble, all of you, and hear!
   Who among them has declared these things?
The Lord loves him;
   he shall perform his purpose on Babylon,
   and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
¹⁵ I, even I, have spoken and called him,
   I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.
¹⁶ Draw near to me, hear this!
   From the beginning I have not spoken in secret,
   from the time it came to be I have been there.
And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.

¹⁷ Thus says the Lord,
   your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
I am the Lord your God,
   who teaches you for your own good,
   who leads you in the way you should go.
¹⁸ O that you had paid attention to my commandments!
   Then your prosperity would have been like a river,
   and your success like the waves of the sea;
¹⁹ your offspring would have been like the sand,
   and your descendants like its grains;
their name would never be cut off
   or destroyed from before me.

²⁰ Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea,
   declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it,
send it forth to the end of the earth;
   say, ‘The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!’
²¹ They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;
   he made water flow for them from the rock;
   he split open the rock and the water gushed out.

²² ‘There is no peace’, says the Lord, ‘for the wicked.’