This is what the Lord says—
    your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
“For your sake I will send to Babylon
    and bring down as fugitives all the Babylonians,
    in the ships in which they took pride.
15 I am the Lord, your Holy One,
    Israel’s Creator, your King.”

16 This is what the Lord says—
    he who made a way through the sea,
    a path through the mighty waters,
17 who drew out the chariots and horses,
    the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again,
    extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:
18 “Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
20 The wild animals honour me,
    the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
21     the people I formed for myself
    that they may proclaim my praise.

God is going to do a ”new thing”. It will be a second, and greater ‘exodus’ than the first from Egypt. Once again He will lead His people through the wilderness, and abundantly provide for them on their journey home from Babylon to Israel.

However, as Derek Kidner points out in the ‘New Bible Commentary’ (p.658), for the real fulfilment of this passage ‘we must look beyond the modest homecomings from Babylon of the sixth and fifth centuries BC, although these are certainly in view, to the exodus which the Son of God accomplished at Jerusalem (Lk.9:31; cf. 1 Cor.10:4,11), which alone justifies the language of this and kindred passages.’

God’s saving work in our lives, through the Cross of Jesus, is ”to the praise of his glorious grace…for the praise of his glory…to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14. Compare this with Is.43:21).

 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9,10)