_Hearken unto Me, O Jacob, and Israel My Called: I am He; I am First, yea, I am Last. Yea, My hand hath founded Earth,_[122] _and My right hand hath spread Heaven; when I call unto them they stand together._
_Be gathered, all of you, and hearken, Who among them_--that is, the Gentiles--_hath published these things_?--that is, such things as the following, the prophecy given in the next clause of the verse: _Whom Jehovah loveth shall perform His pleasure on Babylon, and his arm_ shall be on _the Chaldeans_. This was the sum of what Jehovah promised long ago;[123] not Cyrus' name, not that a Gentile, a Persian, should deliver God's people, for these are among the new things which were not published beforehand, at which the traditional Israelites were offended,--but this general fiat of God's sovereignty, _that whomever Jehovah loves_, or _likes, he shall perform His pleasure on Babylon. I, even I, have spoken_--this, in ver. 14_b_, was My speaking. _Yea, I have called him; I have brought him, and he will make his way to prosper._ Again emphasize the change of tense. Cyrus is already called, but, while the prophet speaks, he has not yet reached his goal in the capture of Babylon.
Some ambassador from the Lord, whether the prophet or the Servant of Jehovah, now takes up the parable, and, after presenting himself, addresses a final exhortation to Israel, summing up the moral meaning of the Exile. _Draw near to me, hear this; not from aforetime in secret have I spoken; from the time that it was, there am I: and now my Lord, Jehovah, hath sent me with His Spirit._[124]
_Thus saith Jehovah, thy Redeemer, Holy of Israel, I am Jehovah thy God, thy Teacher to profit, thy Guide in the way thou shouldest go: Would that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments, then were like the River thy peace, and thy righteousness like the waves of the sea! Then were like the sand thy seed, and the offspring of thy bowels like its grains!_[125] _He shall not be cut off, nor shall perish his name from before Me._
And now at last it is time to be up. Our salvation is nearer than when first we believed. Day has dawned, the gates are opening, the Word has been sufficiently spoken.
_Go forth from Babel, fly from the Chaldeans; With a ringing voice publish and let this be heard, Send ye it out to the end of the earth, Say, Redeemed hath Jehovah His Servant Jacob. And they thirsted not in the deserts He caused them to walk; Waters from a rock He let drop for them, Clave a rock and there flowed forth waters! No peace, saith Jehovah, for the wicked._
We have arrived at the most distinct stage of which our prophecy gives trace. Not that a new start is made with the next passage. Ch. xlix. is the answer of the Servant himself to the appeal made to him in xlviii. 20; and ch. xlix. does not introduce the Servant for the first time, but simply carries further the substance of the opening verses of ch. xlii. Nor is this urgent appeal to _Go forth from Babylon_, which has come to Israel, the only one, or the last, of its kind. It is renewed in ch. lii. 11-12. So that we cannot think that our prophet has even yet got the Fall of Babylon behind him. Nevertheless, the end of ch. xlviii. is the end of the first and chief stage of the prophecy. The fundamental truths about God and salvation have been laid down; the idols have been thoroughly exposed; Cyrus has been explained; Babylon is practically done with. Neither Babylon, nor Cyrus, nor, except for a moment, the idols, are mentioned in the rest of the prophecy. The Deliverance of Israel is certain. And what now interests the prophet is first, how the Holy Nation will accomplish the destiny for which it has been set free, and next, how the Holy City shall be prepared for the Nation to inhabit. These are the two themes of chs. xlix. to lxvi. The latter of them, the Restoration of Jerusalem, has scarcely been touched by our prophet as yet. But he has already spoken much of the Nation's Destiny as the Servant of the Lord; and now that we have exhausted the subject of the deliverance from Babylon, we will take up his prophecies on the Servant, both those which we have passed over in chs. xl.-xlviii. and those which still lie ahead of us.