Comprising this first part of the chapter is the Lord’s plea that his people must shift their thinking from their unreasonable, accusatory lament in Isaiah 49:14 that the Lord had arbitrarily forsaken and forgotten Zion (see also Isaiah 40:27; Isaiah 49:14), to a renewed sense of the Lord’s power and desire to deliver them from their sin.
1 Thus says the LORD: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.