It may seem that comparing the well-being which, according to the prophet, awaits the people if they follow the Torah and God's commandments to the sea or a river is no more than a beautiful image. Yet it is not quite that simple. What is the Torah? What is the Decalogue?...
It may seem that comparing the well-being which, according to the prophet, awaits the people if they follow the Torah and God's commandments to the sea or a river is no more than a beautiful image. Yet it is not quite that simple. What is the Torah? What is the Decalogue? Commandments given by God? Laws based on those commandments? Undoubtedly, but not only that. Rabbinic tradition contains the idea of the Torah written on heavenly tablets before the creation of the world. We could treat that image as an allegory too, if we saw the Torah only as a text or as a legal and moral code. But is that what it is? Does God need such a code? Is morality what matters to Him, or something else? Today we often think that ethics is what matters most in communion with God, that God needs our morality, and that sin is abhorrent to Him because it is immoral.
The Bible sees this differently. The most terrible thing about any sin is not the violation of a moral norm, nor even the harm that violation does to one's neighbour—terrible though that may be. The most terrible thing is that sin objectively separates us from God and makes communion with Him impossible. Not some abstract communion, but a very concrete one, of the kind described in the Bible: communion as an encounter that completely changes a person because God's presence acts upon human nature.
It is this transforming action that sin obstructs. God will not work with a person whose nature—bodily and inward—is corrupted by sin. In any case, He will first cleanse that nature. To transform someone completely, they must be completely cleansed of sin: this is why the Messiah came into the world. The question of sin is spiritual, not moral. And the Torah describes the laws governing a person's relationship with God and people's relationships with one another.
It describes the laws of spiritual life, for spirituality is precisely relationships: people's relationships with one another and with God; their relationships with Christ, and Christ's relationship with His heavenly Father. These laws are as unshakeable as the laws of nature. They come from the same Source. By following them, we do not merely become decent people, or religious people. By following the Torah, we become part of God's plan and of God's great world—as organic a part of it as the sea or a river, but, unlike them, aware of ourselves and of our relationship with God. A world that will one day become the Kingdom, which we too will enter.
48 God reproves their hypocrisy and obstinacy by his prophecies, Isa 48:1-8.
He spares them for his name's sake, and that they may learn to know him aright, Isa 48:9-11.
God's powerful salvation a motive to obedience, Isa 48:12-17.
God laments their backwardness, Isa 48:18-19.
Deliverance out of Babylon, Isa 48:20-21.
No peace to the wicked, Isa 48:22.
48:17 Teacheth - Who from time to time have made known to thee, all necessary doctrines; which, if observed by thee, would have been infinitely profitable to thee, both for this life and that to come.So that it is not my fault, but thine own, if thou dost not profit.Leadeth - Who acquainteth thee with thy duty in all the concerns of thy life; so that thou canst not pretend ignorance.
48:18 As the waves - Infinite and continual.