Isaiah 48:1,2

Hear ye this, O house of Jacob— These verses contain a just and solemn address to the Jewish people; who, though by their profession and external worship seeming to cultivate the true religion, to call God their God, and to depend upon him, yet were obstinately incredulous, extremely inclined to idolatry, and little regardful of those prophesies which Isaiah and other true prophets delivered to them. The meaning of the phrase, Are come forth out of the waters of Judah, is very evident from Deuteronomy 33:28. Numbers 24:6. Numerous nations are frequently compared in Scripture to wide extending rivers, and their progenitors sometimes to a sacred stream bursting out of a rock, and sometimes by prosopopoeia to a river, as if it were a person pouring his waters out of an urn. The attributes of the Jewish people here enumerated, are peculiarly accommodated to the prophet's main scope and design in this chapter.