Isaiah 48:17

"Thus saith Jehovah, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am Jehovah thy God, who teacheth thee to profit, who leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the grains thereof (of the sand): his name would not be cut off nor destroyed from before me."

This is a remarkable expostulation which reminds us of the words of Christ himself in his lament over Jerusalem. "Oh, if thou hadst known the things that belong unto thy peace in this thy day, but now are they hidden from thine eyes!" It appears from what is said here that God's promise to Abraham that his posterity should be as the stars of heaven the sands of the seashore, etc., that the greater fulfillment was lost forever in the multiple rebellions of obstinate and stubborn Israel. How evident this must have been in that pitiful little handful of a once mighty nation that returned from the captivity in Babylon. As Kelley stated it, however, "Even the best teacher fails, when his pupils are unwilling to learn."[20] The tragedy of Israel could easily have been avoided; but the prophet reminds her that all of her past history was one unending tragedy of squandered opportunities. "This, of course, places the responsibility of Israel's tragic state squarely upon the people themselves."[21]

The final clauses of Isaiah 48:19 are very important. They state clearly and emphatically that "Israel's name has been cut off and from God as a people; their name has been cut off, the Jews are no longer God's people, although they shall always exist as a race,"[22] or at least until "the fullness of the Gentiles be come in" (Romans 11:25).