Israel delivered and redeemed
    your neck stiff as iron, your brow like bronze,
   5   therefore I told you of these things long ago,
  and declared them before they came about,
  so that you could not say, ‘This was my idol's doing;
  my image, the god that I fashioned, he ordained them.’
   6   You have heard what I said; consider it well,
  and you must admit the truth of it.
  Now I show you new things,
    hidden things which you did not know before.
   7   They were not created long ago, but in this very hour;
  you had never heard of them before today.
  You cannot say, ‘I know them already.’
   8   You neither heard nor knew,
  long ago your ears were closed;
  for I knew that you were untrustworthy, treacherous,
  a notorious rebel from your birth.
   9   For the sake of my own name I was patient, ^note
  rather than destroy you I held myself in check.
   10   See how I tested you, not as silver is tested,
    but in the furnace of affliction; there I purified you.
   11   For my honour, for my own honour I did it;
  let them disparage my past triumphs ^note if they will:
  I will not give my glory to any other god.


   12   Hear me, Jacob,
    and Israel whom I called:
I am He; I am the first,
    I am the last also.
   13   With my own hands I founded the earth,
with my right hand I formed the expanse of sky;
  when I summoned them,
    they sprang at once into being.
   14   Assemble, all of you, and listen to me;
  which of you ^note has declared what is coming,
that he whom I ^note love shall wreak my ^note will on Babylon
    and the Chaldaeans shall be scattered?
15   I, I myself, have spoken, I have called him,
I have made him appear, and wherever he goes he shall prosper.
16   Draw near to me and hear this:
  from the beginning I have never spoken in secret;
  from the moment of its first happening I was there. ^note

Israel delivered and redeemed

17   Thus says the Lord your ransomer, the Holy One of Israel:
  I am the Lord your God:
    I teach you for your own advantage
  and lead you in the way you must go.
   18   If only you had listened to my commands,
your prosperity would have rolled on like a river in flood
    and your just success like the waves of the sea;
   19   in number your children would have been like the sand
    and your descendants countless as its grains;
their name would never be erased or blotted from my sight.
20   Come out of Babylon, hasten away from the Chaldaeans;
proclaim it with loud songs of triumph,
  crying the news to the ends of the earth;
tell them, ‘The Lord has ransomed his servant Jacob.’
21   Though he led them through desert places they suffered no thirst,
for them he made water run from the rock,
for them he cleft the rock and streams gushed forth.


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

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