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18 If only you had obeyed my[a] commandments,
prosperity would have flowed to you like a river,[b]
deliverance would have come to you like the waves of the sea.[c]
19 Your descendants would have been as numerous as sand,[d]
and your children[e] like its granules.
Their name would not have been cut off
and eliminated from my presence.[f]
20 Leave Babylon!
Flee from the Babylonians!
Announce it with a shout of joy!
Make this known—
proclaim it throughout the earth![g]
Say, ‘The Lord protects[h] his servant Jacob.

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 48:18 tn Heb “paid attention to” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “had listened to.”
  2. Isaiah 48:18 tn Heb “like a river your peace would have been.” שָׁלוֹם (shalom) probably refers here to the peace and prosperity which God promised in return for obedience to the covenant.
  3. Isaiah 48:18 tn Heb “and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” צְדָקָה (tsedaqah) probably refers here to divine deliverance from enemies. See v. 19.
  4. Isaiah 48:19 tn Heb “like sand”; NCV “as many as the grains of sand.”
  5. Isaiah 48:19 tn Heb “and the issue from your inner parts.”
  6. Isaiah 48:19 tn Heb “and his name would not be cut off and would not be destroyed from before me.”
  7. Isaiah 48:20 tn Heb “to the end of the earth” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV).
  8. Isaiah 48:20 tn Heb “redeems.” See the note at 41:14.