When the people heard Isaiah proclaiming there was "no need to recall the past", it must have seemed scandalous to them. Each year, they gathered at Passover to recall the exodus in gratitude. God often reminded them 'I am your God, who brought you out from Egypt.' The festival of Tabernacles was also a memory of the Exodus. How could they not remember the past?

Isaiah, of course, is not asking them simply to forget the past. He is urging them not to be so tied up with the past so as to be blind to what God could and would do in their own present and future lives. "See, I am doing a new deed." In the Bible, references to "newness" are also proclamations of hope. God performed the great miracle of the Exodus for them, but God is not confined to the past: in every moment God is present with his grace to renew us and to give us new hope. The New Testament testifies that the early Church had a very strong sense of the Risen Christ ever-present with them so that there was never any sense of nostalgia, longing for the past. God makes all things new