Isaiah 48:16

God again urged His people to listen carefully (cf. Isaiah 48:1; Isaiah 48:12; Isaiah 48:14). From the beginning, God’s promises concerning the future had not been vague and ambiguous. They could be verified easily, and they evidenced Yahweh’s nearness in human life. God was there when He made those predictions.

"When Jesus Christ incarnated God on earth, this was not some shocking new modality of revelation; it was the logical endpoint of all that God had been doing in and through Israel up to that point." [Note: Oswalt, The Book . . . 40-66, p. 278.]

The speaker of the last part of this verse is unclear. God appears to have been speaking in the first part of the verse, but now we read that God sent "Me." This may be Isaiah speaking. [Note: Ibid.] If so, the point is that God and His Spirit had sent Isaiah to communicate and to confirm the truthfulness of what God had just said. Another view is that Messiah, the Servant, speaks (cf. Isaiah 48:12). [Note: Motyer, p. 381; Grogan, p. 281; Young, 3:259; J. Martin, pp. 1102-3; Delitzsch, 2:253; Jennings, p. 564; Archer, p. 643; and Ortlund, p. 320.] The point then would be that the Messiah would testify to the truth of what God had just said-empowered by the Spirit. A third view is that the speaker is an unknown leader. [Note: Watts, Isaiah 34-66, p. 178.] I prefer the second view. The Servant speaks again in Isaiah 49:1-6. Since the speaker in the context is the Lord, it seems more natural that a member of the Godhead would say these words than the prophet. If true, this is one of the clearest Old Testament intimations of the Trinity.