Catholic Commentary
No Peace for the Wicked: Closing Warning
22“There is no peace”, says Yahweh, “for the wicked.”
Isaiah 48:22 declares that Yahweh grants no peace to the wicked, establishing a stark boundary between the restored remnant and those who persistently refuse God's commandments. The verse functions as an architectural seal closing the first of three major sections in Isaiah, warning that covenant blessing excludes those who reject divine instruction.
Peace is not a feeling you earn through comfort—it's a covenant reality that exists only in the presence of righteousness, and the wicked cannot have it no matter how much they try.
Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this verse by holding together, without contradiction, God's unconditional mercy and the real possibility of self-exclusion from that mercy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end" (CCC 1037). Isaiah 48:22 is a scriptural foundation for precisely this teaching: "no peace for the wicked" is not a decree of arbitrary divine wrath, but the statement of a moral and ontological reality. Wickedness — the consistent refusal of God's covenant — is incompatible with shalom by its very nature.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 87), teaches that sin carries its own punishment intrinsically, in that it disorders the soul and removes it from its proper end. The absence of peace is thus not merely a penalty imposed from without but a consequence written into the nature of the moral act itself.
Pope John Paul II, in Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (1984), echoes the logic of this verse when he identifies the roots of the world's lack of peace in personal and social sin: "There can be no peace without conversion" (§16). The verse also resonates with the Council of Trent's teaching on the necessity of repentance and the reality of final judgment (Session VI, Canons 29–30). The Church Fathers — Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine — all insist that the peace Christ offers (John 14:27) is categorically different from worldly peace precisely because it is rooted in righteousness, and that those who cling to wickedness have, by that very clinging, shut themselves out from it.
For a contemporary Catholic, Isaiah 48:22 cuts through one of the most pervasive temptations of our cultural moment: the assumption that peace — understood as comfort, ease, or freedom from inner turmoil — can be achieved while remaining indifferent to moral conversion. Our culture offers countless substitutes for genuine shalom: therapeutic wellness, material security, distraction. Yet the restlessness Augustine diagnosed in the fifth century — "our heart is restless until it rests in Thee" — is more acute than ever. This verse is a prophetic diagnosis: the anxiety, fragmentation, and meaninglessness that many experience are not accidental. They are the structural absence of shalom that attends a life turned away from God.
Practically, the verse invites an examination of conscience with real stakes: Where in my life am I choosing persistent patterns of sin — dishonesty, unchastity, injustice, pride — and simultaneously expecting interior peace? It calls every Catholic to take seriously the Sacrament of Reconciliation, not as a bureaucratic absolution but as the concrete threshold through which the wicked are made righteous and shalom becomes possible again. The promise and the warning belong together: God's mercy is extravagant, but it requires the door of repentance to be opened from within.
Commentary
Literal Meaning and Literary Context
Isaiah 48:22 is one of the most compressed yet theologically weighted verses in the entire book of Isaiah. It reads, almost abruptly, as a closing seal upon the great cycle of chapters 40–48, a section dominated by the "Servant Songs," oracles of comfort to Babylon's exiles, and polemics against idolatry. The phrase "says Yahweh" (ne'um YHWH) marks the utterance as a direct divine oracle — not prophetic reflection, but God's own word. The repetition of this identical closing formula in Isaiah 57:21 (closing chapters 49–57) and its near-echo in 66:24 (closing chapters 58–66) reveals a deliberate editorial structure: the entire book of Isaiah is organized into three sections, each sealed with a warning about the fate of the wicked. Far from being an afterthought, this verse is an architectural keystone.
The Word "Shalom"
The Hebrew shalom, rendered "peace," is far richer than mere absence of conflict. It encompasses wholeness, flourishing, harmonious relationship with God and creation, and covenantal well-being. Throughout chapters 40–48, Yahweh has been lavishing images of shalom upon the faithful remnant: rivers in the desert (43:19), comfort like a mother's embrace (49:15), light to the nations (42:6). To say the wicked have "no shalom" is therefore not merely to predict anxiety or strife; it is to declare their fundamental exclusion from the covenantal order of restored life that God is inaugurating. The wicked (resha'im) are those who have persistently refused to hear, heed, and walk in God's commandments — a refusal that chapters 46–48 have repeatedly condemned, especially in the context of Israel's idolatry and hard-heartedness (48:4, 8).
Verse-by-Verse Analysis
The verse functions syntactically as a divine quotation within a prophetic frame, lending it double authority: Isaiah testifies, and Yahweh speaks. Its placement immediately after the sweeping, consoling promise of Isaiah 48:20 — "Go out from Babylon!" — is jarring by design. Liberation is proclaimed, but its benefits are not universally distributed. The oracle cleaves humanity into those who go out (the redeemed, obedient remnant) and those for whom no peace exists. This binary is not fatalistic; throughout chapters 40–55 the prophet has urgently pleaded for Israel to "listen," "hear," and "return" (e.g., 48:12, 17–18). The warning is evangelical in impulse: it calls people back from wickedness before the door closes.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers read this verse typologically as pointing to the New Covenant's sharper delineation of moral accountability. Origen saw Isaiah's "wicked" as those who refuse the Logos, the true source of peace (cf. John 14:27). St. Jerome, commenting on this refrain across all three sections of Isaiah, identified a typological progression: the three closings warn against the wickedness of apostasy, hypocrisy, and final impenitence respectively — corresponding to stages of spiritual deterioration. The spiritual sense points to Christ, who is our peace (Eph. 2:14), and who simultaneously warns that those who refuse reconciliation exclude themselves from the Kingdom. The verse thus stands as a prophetic anticipation of the Last Judgment's logic: not arbitrary condemnation, but the natural consequence of a life turned away from the God who is Shalom itself.