Isaiah 48:22

God having in the next foregoing verses foretold, that peace and blessed deliverance which he would certainly give to his servant Jacob, Isaiah 48:20, he here adds an explication and limitation of this mercy, and declareth that wicked men should not enjoy the benefit of this mercy; where, by the wicked, he means either,

1. The Babylonians, who well deserved that title; who shall be destroyed, when God's Israel shall be delivered: or rather,

2. The unbelieving and ungodly Jews, of whom these very words are used again, Isaiah 57:21, and to whom such a denunciation as this was far more proper and necessary, at least in this place, than to the Babylonians; for he had already said far more and worse things than this concerning them, having again and again declared that Babylon should be destroyed, in order to this deliverance of God's people out of it. But there was great need why he should say this to the ungodly Jews, because they were exceeding prone to cry, Peace, peace to themselves, when there was no solid ground of peace; and they confidently expected a share in this great deliverance. This therefore was a very seasonable caution to the Jews in Babylon to take heed to themselves, and to prepare for this mercy, and to purify themselves from ali wickedness; because those of them who should either wickedly tarry in Babylon, when God invited and required them to go out of it, and when their godly brethren returned to their own land, and to the place of God's worship; or continue in wickedness, when they were restored to their own country; should not enjoy that tranquillity and comfort which they promised to themselves. And the necessity of this commination appears from the event; for the Jews that returned to Canaan did, for the most part, relapse to many of their former sins, and therefore fell short of that peace and prosperity which otherwise they might have enjoyed.