Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fertile valley of those who are overcome with wine! Behold, the Lord has a mighty and strong one. Like a storm of hail, a destroying storm, and like a storm of mighty waters overflowing, he will cast them down to the earth with his hand. The crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim will be trodden under foot. The fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fertile valley, shall be like the first-ripe fig before the summer; which someone picks and eats as soon as he sees it. In that day, Yahweh of Armies will become a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the residue of his people, and a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment, and strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate.
They also reel with wine, and stagger with strong drink. The priest and the prophet reel with strong drink. They are swallowed up by wine. They stagger with strong drink. They err in vision. They stumble in judgment. For all tables are completely full of filthy vomit and filthiness.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 Meaning, the proud kingdom of the Israelites, which were…
Meaning, the proud kingdom of the Israelites, which were drunken with worldly prosperity.
Because the Israelites for the most part dwelt in plentiful valleys, he meaneth hereby the valley of them that had abundance of worldly prosperity, and were as it were crowned therewith as with garlands.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–8 Isa 28:1 Woe to the crown of pride, to…
Isa 28:1 Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty [is] a fading flower, which [are] on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine!
Ver. 1. Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim.] Drunkenness is a sin, at the heel whereof hangeth many a woe. Some think it is a dry drunkenness that is here threatened - that there is a dry drunkenness as well as a wet; see Isa 51:21 2Ti 2:26, ινα ανανηψωσι, that they may awake out of their drunken sleep - a drunkenness with prosperity, which made them proud and dissolute, even the king of Israel and his counsellors also, not considering that in maxima libertate minima est licentia; " it is not for kings to drink wine." {Pro 31:4}
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Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower.] Or, And to the fading flower of his goodly gallantry. Some conceive that the prophet here alludeth to the etymology of the word Ephraim, whereof see Gen 41:42, but Ephraim was now declining and decaying.
That are overcome with wine.] Heb., Smitten, beaten, overmastered, as Sisera was by Jael’s hammer, which hath its name from the word here used. {Jdg 4:22} Tremellius rendereth it, obtusis vino, to those that are blunted with wine, or beaten about the ears with it. {a}
{a} Kραιπαλη, Crapula, παρα το παλλειν το καρα.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–8 The crown of pride; that proud and insolent kingdom;…
The crown of pride; that proud and insolent kingdom; for the crown is oft put for the kingdom, as Jer 13:18, &c.
The drunkards; either,
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1. Metaphorically, drunk with proud self-confidence, and security, and prosperity; or rather,
2. Properly, by comparing this with Isa 28:7; Hos 7:5; Amo 6:6, where the Israelites are taxed with this sin. For having many and excellent vines among them, they were exposed to this sin, and frequently overcome by it.
Of Ephraim; of the kingdom of the ten tribes; which is commonly called. by the name of Ephraim, as hath been oft noted before.
Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower; whose glory and greatness shall suddenly wither and perish.
Which are; which proud and drunken Israelites have their common and chief abode. Or, which is, i.e. which flower is-or which beauty or glory is.
The head of the fat valleys either,
1. In Samaria, which might well be called the head, as being seated upon a mountain; and the head of the kingdom, and the head of the fat valleys, because it was encompassed with many fat and rich valleys. Or,
2. Upon the chief or choicest (as this word signifies, Exo 30:23; Son 4:14; Isa 9:14,15, and elsewhere) of the fat or rich valleys; which they made occasions and instruments of luxury.
That are overcome, Heb. that are smitten, or broken, or overthrown, or knocked down; all which significations of this word fitly agree to drunkards.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 Here, I. The prophet warns the kingdom of the…
Here, I. The prophet warns the kingdom of the ten tribes of the judgments that were coming upon them for their sins, which were soon after executed by the king of Assyria, who laid their country waste, and carried the people into captivity. Ephraim had his name from fruitfulness, their soil being very fertile and the products of it abundant and the best of the kind; they had a great many fat valleys (Isa 28:1, Isa 28:4), and Samaria, which was situated on a hill, was, as it were, on the head of the fat valleys. Their country was rich and pleasant, and as the garden of the Lord: it was the glory of Canaan, as that was the glory of all lands; their harvest and vintage were the glorious beauty on the head of their valleys, which were covered over with corn and vines. Now observe,
1. What an ill use they made of their plenty. What God gave them to serve him with they perverted, and abused, by making it the food and fuel of their lusts. (1.) They were puffed up with pride by it. The goodness with which God crowned their years, which should have been to him a crown of praise, was to them a crown of pride. Those that are rich in the world are apt to be high-minded, Ti1 6:17. Their king, who wore the crown, was proud that he ruled over so rich a country; Samaria, their royal city, was notorious for pride. Perhaps it was usual at their festivals, or revels, to wear garlands made up of flowers and ears of corn, which they wore in honour of their fruitful country. Pride was a sin that generally prevailed among them, and therefore the prophet, in his name who resists the proud, boldly proclaims a woe to the crown of pride. If those who wear crowns be proud of them, let them not think to escape this woe. What men are proud of, be it ever so mean, is to them as a crown; he that is proud thinks himself as great as a king. But woe to those who thus exalt themselves, for they shall be abased; their pride is the preface to their destruction. (2.) They indulged themselves in sensuality. Ephraim was notorious for drunkenness, and excess of riot; Samaria, the head of the fat valleys, was full of those that were overcome with wine, were broken with it, so the margin. See how foolishly drunkards act, and no marvel when, in the very commission of the sin, they make fools and brutes of themselves; they yield, [1.] To be conquered by the sin; it overcomes them, and brings them into bondage (Pe2 2:19); they are led captive by it, and the captivity is the more shameful and inglorious because it is voluntary. Some of these wretched slaves have themselves owned that there is not a greater drudgery in the world than hard drinking. They are overcome not with the wine, but with the love of it. [2.] To be ruined by it. They are broken by wine. Their constitution is broken by it, and their health ruined. They are broken in the callings and estates, and their souls are in danger of being eternally undone, and all this for the gratification of a base lust. Woe to these drunkards of Ephraim! Ministers must bring the general woes of the word home to particular places and persons. We must say, Woe to this or that person, if he be a drunkard. There is a particular woe to the drunkards of Ephraim, for they are of God's professing people, and it becomes them worse than any other; they know better, and therefore should give a better example. Some make the crown of pride to belong to the drunkards, and to mean the garlands with which those were crowned that got the victory in their wicked drinking matches and drank down the rest of the company. They were proud of their being mighty to drink wine; but woe to those who thus glory in their shame.
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2. The justice of God in taking away their plenty from them, which they thus abused. Their glorious beauty, the plenty they were proud of, is but a fading flower; it is meat that perishes. The most substantial fruits, if God blast them and blow upon them, are but fading flowers, Isa 28:1. God can easily take away their corn in the season thereof (Hos 2:9), and recover locum vastatum - ground that has been alienated and has run to waste, those goods of his which they prepared for Baal. God has an officer ready to make a seizure for him, has one at his beck, a mighty and strong one, who is able to do the business, even the king of Assyria, who shall cast down to the earth with the hand, shall easily and effectually, and with the turn of a hand, destroy all that which they are proud of and pleased with, Isa 28:2. He shall throw it down to the ground, to be broken to pieces with a strong hand, with a hand that they cannot oppose. Then the crown of pride, and the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under foot (Isa 28:3); they shall lie exposed to contempt, and shall not be able to recover themselves. Drunkards, in their folly, are apt to talk proudly, and vaunt themselves most when they most shame themselves; but they thereby render themselves the more ridiculous. The beauty of their valleys, which they gloried in, will be, (1.) Like a fading flower (as before, Isa 28:1); it will wither of itself, and has in itself the principles of its own corruption; it will perish in time by its own moth and rust. (2.) Like the hasty fruit, which, as soon as it is discovered, is plucked and eaten up; so the wealth of this world, besides that it is apt to decay of itself, is subject to be devoured by others as greedily as the first-ripe fruit, which is earnestly desired, Mic 7:1. Thieves break through and steal. The harvest which the worldling is proud of the hungry eat up (Job 5:5); no sooner do they see the prey but they catch at it, and swallow up all they can lay their hands on. It is likewise easily devoured, as that fruit which, being ripe before it has grown, is very small, and is soon eaten up; and there being little of it, and that of little worth, it is not reserved, but used immediately.
II. He next turns to the kingdom of Judah, whom he calls the residue of his people (Isa 28:5), for they were but two tribes to the other ten.
1. He promises them God's favours, and that they shall be taken under his guidance and protection when the beauty of Ephraim shall be left exposed to be trodden down and eaten up, Isa 28:5, Isa 28:6. In that day, when the Assyrian army is laying Israel waste, and Judah might think that their neighbour's house being on fire their own was in danger, in that day of treading down and perplexity, then God will be to the residue of his people all they need and can desire; not only to the kingdom of Judah, but to those of Israel who had kept their integrity, and, as was probably the case with some, betook themselves to the land of Judah, to be sheltered by good king Hezekiah. When the Assyrian, that mighty one, was in Israel as a tempest of hail, noisy and battering, as a destroying storm bearing down all before it, especially at sea, and as a flood of mighty waters overflowing the country (Isa 28:2), then in that day will the Lord of hosts, of all hosts, distinguish by peculiar favours his people who have distinguished themselves by a steady and singular adherence to him, and that which they most need he will himself be to them. This very much enhances the worth of the promises that God, covenanting to be to his people a God all-sufficient, undertakes to be himself all that to them which they can desire. (1.) He will put all the credit and honour upon them which are requisite, not only to rescue them from contempt, but to gain them esteem and reputation. He will be to them for a crown of glory and for a diadem of beauty. Those that wore the crown of pride looked upon God's people with disdain, and trampled upon them, for they were the song of the drunkards of Ephraim; but God will so appear for them by his providence as to make it evident that they have his favour towards them, and that shall be to them a crown of glory; for what greater glory can any people have than for God to acknowledge them as his own? And he will so appear in them, by his grace, as to make it evident that they have his image renewed on them, and that shall be to them a diadem of beauty; for what greater beauty can any person have than the beauty of holiness? Note, Those that have God for their God have him for a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty; for they are made to him kings and priests. (2.) He will give them all the wisdom and grace necessary to the due discharge of the duty of their place. He will himself be a spirit of judgment to those that sit in judgment; the privy counsellors shall be guided by wisdom and discretion and the judges shall govern by justice and equity. It is a great mercy to any people when those that are called to places of power and public trust are qualified for their places, when those that sit in judgment have a spirit of judgment, a spirit of government. (3.) He will give them all the courage and boldness requisite to carry them resolutely through the difficulties and oppositions they are likely to meet with. He will be for strength to those that turn the battle to the gate, to the gates of the enemy whose cities they besiege, or to their own gates, when they sally out upon the enemies that besiege them. The strength of the soldiery depends as much upon God as the wisdom of the magistracy; and where God gives both these he is to that people a crown of glory. This may well be supposed to refer to Christ, and so the Chaldee paraphrast understands it: In that day shall the Messiah be a crown of glory. Simeon calls him the glory of his people Israel; and he is made of God to us wisdom, righteousness, and strength.
2. He complains of the corruptions that were found among them, and the many corrupt ones (Isa 28:7): But they also, many of those of Judah, have erred through wine. There are drunkards of Jerusalem, as well as drunkards of Ephraim; and therefore the mercy of God is to be so much the more admired that he has not blasted the glory of Judah as he has done that of Ephraim. Sparing mercy lays us under peculiar obligations when it is thus distinguishing. Ephraim's sins are found in Judah, and yet not Ephraim's ruins. They have erred through wine. Their drinking to excess is itself a practical error; they think to raise their fancy by it, but they ruin their judgment, and so put a cheat upon themselves; they think to preserve their health by it and help digestion, but they spoil their constitution and hasten diseases and deaths. It is also the occasion of a great many errors in principle; their understanding is clouded and their conscience debauched by it; and therefore, to support themselves in it, they espouse corrupt notions, and form their minds in favour of their lusts. Probably some were drawn in to worship idols by their love of the wine and strong drink which there was plenty of at their idolatrous festivals; and so they erred through wine, as Israel, for love of the daughters of Moab, joined themselves to Baal-peor. Three things are here observed as aggravations of this sin: - (1.) That those were guilty of it whose business it was to warn others against it and to teach them better, and therefore who ought to have set a better example: The priest and the prophet are swallowed up of wine; their office is quite drowned and lost in it. The priests, as sacrificers, were obliged by a particular law to be temperate (Lev 10:9), and, as rulers and magistrates, it was not for them to drink wine, Pro 31:4. The prophets were a kind of Nazarites (as appears by Amo 2:11), and, as reprovers by office, were concerned to keep at the utmost distance from the sins they reproved in others; yet there were many of them ensnared in this sin. What! a priest, a prophet, a minister, and yet drunk! Tell it not in Gath. Such a scandal are they to their coat. (2.) That the consequences of it were very pernicious, not only by the ill influence of their example, but the prophet, when he was drunk, erred in vision; the false prophets plainly discovered themselves to be so when they were in drink. The priest stumbled in judgment and forgot the law (Pro 31:5); he reeled and staggered as much in the operations of his mind as in the motions of his body. What wisdom or justice can be expected from those that sacrifice reason, and virtue, and conscience, and all that is valuable to such a base lust as the love of strong drink is? Happy art thou, O land! when thy princes eat and drink for strength, and not for drunkenness, Ecc 10:17. (3.) That the disease was epidemic, and the generality of those that kept any thing of a table were infected with it: All tables are full of vomit, Isa 28:8. See what an odious thing the sin of drunkenness is, what an affront it is to human society; it is rude and ill-mannered enough to sicken the beholders, for the tables where they eat their meat are filthily stained with the marks of this sin, which the sinners declare as Sodom. Their tables are full of vomit, so that the victor, instead of being proud of his crown, ought rather to be ashamed of it. It bodes ill to any people when so sottish a sin as drunkenness has become national.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–8 Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards…
Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim,.... Or, "of the drunkards of Ephraim": or, "O crown of pride, O drunkards of Ephraim (l)"; who are both called upon, and a woe denounced against them. Ephraim is put for the ten tribes, who were drunk either in a literal sense, for to the sin of drunkenness were they addicted, Hos 7:5, Amo 6:6. The Jews say (m), that wine of Prugiatha (which perhaps was a place noted for good wine), and the waters of Diomasit (baths), cut off the ten tribes from Israel; which both Jarchi and Kimchi, on the place, make mention of; that is, as Buxtorf (n) interprets it, pleasures and delights destroyed the ten tribes. The inhabitants of Samaria, and the places adjacent, especially were addicted to this vice; these places abounding with excellent wines. Sichem, which were in these parts, is thought to be called, from the drunkenness of its inhabitants, Sychar, Joh 4:5 this is a sin very uncomely in any, but especially in professors of religion, as these were, and ought to be declaimed against: or they were drunkards in a metaphorical sense, either with idolatry, the two calves being set up in Dan and Bethel, which belonged to the ten tribes; just as the kings of the earth are said to be drunk with the wine of antichrist's fornication, or the idolatry of the church of Rome, Rev 17:2 or with pride and haughtiness, being elated with the fruitfulness of their country, their great affluence and riches, and numbers of people; in all which they were superior to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and in which they piqued themselves, and are therefore called "the crown of pride"; and especially their king may be meant, who was lifted up with pride that he ruled over such a country and people; or rather the city of Samaria, the metropolis of the ten tribes, and the royal city. Perhaps there may be an allusion to the crowns wore by drunkards at their revels, and particularly by such who were mighty to drink wine or strong drink, and overcame others, and triumphed in it: pride and sensuality are the vices condemned, and they often go together:
whose glorious beauty; which lay in the numbers of their inhabitants, in their wealth and riches, and in their fruits of corn and wine:
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is a fading flower; not to be depended on, soon destroyed, and quickly gone:
which are on the head of the fat valleys; meaning particularly the corn and wine, the harvest and vintage, with which the fruitful valleys being covered, looked very beautiful and glorious: very probably particular respect is had to Samaria, the head of the kingdom, and which was situated on a hill, and surrounded with fruitful valleys; for not Jerusalem is here meant, as Cocceius; nor Gethsemane, by the fat valleys, as Jerom:
of them that are overcome with wine; or smitten, beaten (o) knocked down with it, as with a hammer, and laid prostrate on the ground, where they lie fixed to it, not able to get up; a true picture of a drunkard, that is conquered by wine, and enslaved unto it; see Isa 28:3.
(l) "vae coronae erectionis ebriorum Ephraimi", Cocceius, Gataker. (m) T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 147. 2. (n) Lex. Talmud. col. 529. (o) "concussi vino", Pagninus, "percussi vino", so some in Vatablus; "conquassantur vel conculcantur a vino", Forerius; "contusorum a vino", Cocceius.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–7 The drunkenness of Ephraim bringeth destruction on them, a…
The drunkenness of Ephraim bringeth destruction on them, a remnant shall be honourable, ver. 1-8. Their unteachableness, 9-13. Their mock at God's threatening, ver. 14, 15. Christ a sure foundation to believers, ver. 16. And destruction to the mockers, who are exhorted to amend, ver. 17-22. God's providence, its work and seasons towards the church, under the figure of a husbandman, 23-29.
Pride - That proud and insolent kingdom. Drunkards - Having many and excellent vines among them, they were much exposed to this sin. Ephraim - Of the kingdom of the ten tribes. Who are - Who have their common abode. The head - Samaria, might well be called the head, as being seated upon a mountain, and the head of the kingdom, and the head of the fat valleys, because it was encompassed with many fat and rich valleys.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–6 This chapter begins with a denunciation of the approaching…
CHAPTER XXVIII
This chapter begins with a denunciation of the approaching ruin
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of the Israelites by Shalmaneser, whose power is compared to a
tempest or flood, and his keenness to the avidity with which
one plucks and swallows the grape that is soonest ripe, 1-4.
It then turns to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who were
to continue a kingdom after the final captivity of their
brethren; and gives first a favourable prognostication of their
affairs under Hezekiah, 5, 6;
but soon changes to reproofs and threatenings for their
intemperance and their profaneness, 7, 8.
They are introduced as not only scornfully rejecting, but also
mocking and ridiculing, the instructions of the prophet, 9, 10.
To this God immediately retorts in terms alluding to their own
mocking, but differently applied, 11-13.
The prophet then addresses these scoffers, 14;
who considered themselves as perfectly secure from every evil,
15;
and assures them that there was no method under heaven but one,
by which they could be saved, 16;
that every other vain resource should fail in the day of
visitation, 17, 18.
He then farther adds, that the judgments of God were
particularly levelled against them; and that all the means to
which they trusted for warding them off should be to no
purpose, 19, 20;
as the Almighty, who, on account of his patience and
long-suffering, is amiably described as unacquainted with
punishing, had nevertheless determined to punish them, 21, 22.
The prophet then concludes with a beautiful parable in
explanation and defence of God's dealing with his people,
23-29.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXVIII
Verse 1. Wo to the crown of pride] By the crown of pride, c., Samaria is primarily understood. "Sebaste, the ancient Samaria, is situated on a long mount of an oval figure, having first a fruitful valley, and then a ring of hills running round about it" Maundrell, p. 58. "E regione horum ruderum mons est peramoenus, planitie admodum frugifera circumseptus, super quem olim Samaria urbs condita fuit;" Fureri Itinerarium, p. 93. The city, beautifully situated on the top of a round hill, and surrounded immediately with a rich valley and a circle of other hills beyond it, suggested the idea of a chaplet or wreath of flowers worn upon their heads on occasions of festivity, expressed by the proud crown and the fading flower of the drunkards. That this custom of wearing chaplets in their banquets prevailed among the Jews, as well as among the Greeks and Romans, appears from the following passage of the book of Wisdom: -
"Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments,
And let no flower of the spring pass by us:
Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are
withered."
Wisd. 2:7, 8.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 7 Isa 28:1. Wo, &c. — The second discourse of…
Isa 28:1. Wo, &c. — The second discourse of the third book of Isaiah’s prophecies, according to Vitringa, begins here, and is continued to the end of the thirty-third chapter. He supposes that the whole of it was delivered before the expedition of Sennacherib, and on occasion of some solemn embassy sent to Egypt to implore the help of the Egyptians against the Assyrians. To the crown of pride — The proud state and kingdom of the ten tribes, commonly called Ephraim; or, as some think, Samaria, the capital city, is chiefly intended, which was situated, says Maundrell, “on a long mount of an oval figure; having first a fruitful valley, and then a ring, or crown, of hills running round about it.” Journey from Aleppo, p. 59. It is thought that the prophet alludes to the crown of flowers which used to be worn by the drunkards in their revels; “an image not unfrequently made use of by the prophets, to convey a strong idea of the universal depravity and folly of the nation.” To the drunkards of Ephraim — Having many and excellent vines among them, the Ephraimites were much exposed to this sin, and very frequently guilty of it, Isa 28:7; Hos 7:5; Amo 6:6. Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower — Whose glory and greatness shall suddenly wither and perish, like the garlands of flowers wherewith they crown their heads, amidst their intoxicating cups. Which are on the head of the fat valleys — Which proud and drunken Israelites have their common and chief abode in Samaria, the head of the kingdom, and seated at the head of fat and rich valleys which encompassed it.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Wo - (see the note at Isa 18:1). The…
Wo - (see the note at Isa 18:1). The word here is used to denounce impending judgment.
To the crown of pride - This is a Hebrew mode of expression, denoting the proud or haughty crown. There can be no doubt that it refers to the capital of the kingdom of Ephraim; that is, to Samaria. This city was built by Omri, who purchased ‘the hill Samaria’ of Shemer, for two talents of silver, equal in value to 792 British pounds, 11 shillings, 8d., and built the city on the hill, and called it, after the name of Shemer, Samaria 1Ki 16:24. Omri was king of Israel (925 b.c.), and he made this city the capital of his kingdom. The city was built on a pleasant and fertile hill, and surrounded with a rich valley, with a circle of hills beyond; and the beauty of the hill on which the city was built suggested the idea of a wreath or chaplet of flowers, or a “crown.” After having been destroyed and reduced to an inconsiderable place, it was restored by Herod the Great, 21 b.c., who called it “Sebaste” (Latin, “Augusta”), in honor of the Emperor Augustus. It is usually mentioned by travelers under the name of Sebaste. Maundrell (Travels, p. 58) says, ‘Sebaste, the ancient Samaria, is situated on a long mount of an oval figure; having first a fruitful valley, and then a ring of hills running round it.’ The following is the account which is given by Richardson: ‘Its situation is extremely beautiful, and strong by nature; more so, I think, than Jerusalem. It stands on a fine large insulated hill, compassed all round by a broad, deep valley.
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The valley is surrounded by four hills, one on each side, which are cultivated in terraces to the top, sown with grain, and planted with fig and olive trees, as is also the valley. The hill of Samaria, likewise, rises in terraces to a height equal to any of the adjoining mountains.’ Dr. Robinson, who visited this place in 1838, says, ‘The find round swelling hill, or almost mountain of Samaria, stands alone in the midst of the great basin of some two hours (seven or eight miles) in diameter, surrounded by higher mountains on every side. It is near the eastern side of the basin; and is connected with the eastern mountains, somewhat after the manner of a promontory, by a much lower ridge, having a wady both on the south and on the north. The mountains and the valleys around are to a great extent arable, and enlivened by many villages and the hand of cultivation. From all these circumstances, the situation of the ancient Samaria is one of great beauty.
The hill itself is cultivated to the top; and, at about midway of the ascent, is surrounded by a narrow terrace of level land like a belt, below which the roots of the hill spread off more gradually into the valleys. The whole hill of Sebastich (the Arabic form for the name Sebaste) consists of fertile soil; it is cultivated to the top, and has upon it many olive and fig trees. It would be difficult to find, in all Palestine, a situation of equal strength, fertility, and beauty combined. In all these particulars, it has very greatly the advantage over Jerusalem.’ (Bib. Researches, vol. iii. pp. 136-149). Standing thus by itself, and cultivated to the top, and exceedingly fertile, it was compared by the prophet to a crown, or garland of flowers - such as used to be worn on the head, especially on festival occasions.
To the drunkards of Ephraim - Ephraim here denotes the kingdom of Israel, whose capital was Samaria (see the note at Isa 7:2). That intemperance was the prevailing sin in the kingdom of Israel is not improbable. It prevailed to a great extent also in the kingdom of Judah (see Isa 28:7-8 : compare Isa 5:11, note; Isa 5:22, note).
Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower - That is, it shall soon be destroyed, as a flower soon withers and fades away. This was fulfilled in the destruction that came upon Samaria under the Assyrians when the ten tribes were carried into captivity 2Ki 17:3-6. The allusion in this verse to the ‘crown’ and ‘the fading flower’ encircling Samaria, Grotius thinks is derived from the fact that among the ancients, drunkards and revellers were accustomed to wear a crown or garland on their heads, or that a wreath or chaplet of flowers was usually worn on their festival occasions. That this custom prevailed among the Jews as well as among the Greeks and Romans, is apparent from a statement by the author of the Book of Wisdom:
‘Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ornaments,
And let no flower of the spring pass by us;
Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered.’
- Wisdom Rom 2:7, Rom 2:8.
Which are on the head - Which flowers or chaplets are on the eminence that rises over the fat valleys; that is, on Samaria, which seemed to stand as the head rising from the valley.
Of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine - That are occupied by, or in the possession of, those who are overcome with wine. Margin, ‘Broken’ with wine. Hebrew, (יין הלוּמי hălûmēy yâyin) ‘Smitten with wine;’ corresponding to the Greek ὀινοπλὴξ oinoplēx; that is, they were overcome or subdued by it. A man’s reason, conscience, moral feelings, and physical strength are all overcome by indulgence in wine, and the entire man is prostrate by it. This passage is a proof of what has been often denied, but which further examination has abundantly confirmed, that the inhabitants of wine countries are as certainly intemperate as those which make rise of ardent spirits.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Ephraim. That is, the kingdom of the ten tribes.…
Ephraim. That is, the kingdom of the ten tribes. (Challoner) --- Flower. The pride of the kingdom shall thus decay. (Menochius) --- Head. Samaria, situated on a hill, having under it a most fertile valley. (Challoner) --- See Amos ii. 6., and iv. 2. Samaria was taken in the sixth year of Ezechias.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Isaiah 28-33
THIRD SUBDIVISION
THE RELATION OF ISRAEL TO ASSYRIA IN THE TIME OF KING HEZEKIAH
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Isaiah 28-33
As Isaiah 7-12, resting on the facts related Isa_7:1 sqq., contain the first great cycle of Isaiah’s prophecies, so Isaiah 28-33, which have for their basis the facts narrated in the historical appendix (36–37) contain the second great cycle. Chapters 7–12 depict the relation of Israel to Assyria in the time of Ahaz. Our chapters set forth this relation as it stood in the time of Hezekiah. As the sin of Ahaz consisted in his seeking protection against Aram-Ephraim not in the Lord, but in Assyria, so Hezekiah erred in seeking protection against Assyria, that had become a scourge through Ahab’s guilt, not in the Lord, but in Egypt. Hezekiah, the otherwise pious king, must have been weak enough to yield so far to the influence of those around him, as to sanction a policy which aimed at concluding a league with Egypt, as the infallible means of deliverance. Isaiah now in Isaiah 28-33 assails with all his might this Egyptian alliance, which the government of Hezekiah, knowing it to be contrary to the will of God, was seeking behind the back of the Prophet to bring about with all diplomatic skill, and at great sacrifices of money and property. He follows it from its rise through all stages of its development. He leads us, chap. 28, to its source. The Prophet assigns as its source a swamp, if we may employ a figure; the swamp of low carnal passion for drink. From this swamp the policy had already issued which Ephraim was pursuing to its destruction. From this swamp too the disposition was produced which led Judah to contemn the admonitions of the Lord, and to place wicked confidence in its own carnal prudence (Isa_28:14 sq.). in chap. 29 the Prophet lets it be clearly perceived that the secret plotting behind his back did not remain concealed from him (Isa_29:15 sqq.). But it is not till chap. 30 that he plainly declares (Isa_28:2 sqq.) that those secret machinations were with a view to an alliance with Egypt. But he certifies at once by a written declaration (Isa_28:8), that this Egyptian alliance will be of no benefit. The Lord only will deliver Israel. He will certainly do it. In chaps. 31 and 32, which belong together, the Lord proclaims the vanity of Egyptian succor. Assyria will not fall by the sword of a man (Isa_31:8), but the Lord will overturn it; and to this promise of the impending deliverance of Israel from Assyrian oppression the Prophet immediately attaches a glorious picture of the future, which, while it praises the truly noble disposition of those high in rank in the Messianic time, is very severe on the existing aristocracy, composed of the nobility and of public functionaries; and at the same time (as in chap. 3) addresses with an impressive warning the women who have great influence, and occupy high positions. Finally (33), the Prophet speaks directly to Assyria in order to announce its speedy and sudden destruction. This last chapter contains matter which is for the most part of a joyful character for Israel. It has a dark side for the people of the Lord only so far as it sets forth that the predicted glorious deliverance will make a disagreeable impression on the sinners in Israel, who desire to know nothing of Jehovah. Although therefore chaps. 28–33 are arranged according to a certain plan, they do not, form one connected speech. There are rather five, speeches delivered at different times, each of which in itself forms a whole, while each presents a complete picture of what the Prophet beheld, embracing threatening and promise. We have hers to remark that the Prophet always draws the most remote Messianic future into the sphere of his vision, though he does so every time from a different point of view. The first speech must have been composed before the destruction of Samaria (722 B.C.), for it addresses Samaria as yet standing. Nay, more, as Samaria is seen flourishing in all her pride, and her inhabitants indulge their evil passions without fear or restraint, the speech must have been written before the commencement of the three years’ siege of Samaria by the Assyrians, say in the year 725, and therefore in the commencement of the reign of Hezekiah. Chap. 29 belongs to a later time. In Isa_28:1 the Prophet declares that the city of Jerusalem should be shut in. He can only mean that isolation of the city in regard to which Sennacherib states in his inscriptions (comp. Schrader, pp. 176 and 187), that he had enclosed Hezekiah “as a bird in a cage.” This event, according to the usual chronology, happened in the year 714, while according to the Assyrian monuments (comp. Schrader, Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 299, and our Introduction to chaps, 36–39), it took place in the year 700. As this difference, as we will attempt to show in the introduction to chaps, 36–39, was occasioned by a misunderstanding of later writers, there being originally no disagreement between the biblical and Assyrian chronology, but both originally agreeing in referring the expedition of Sennacherib against Phenicia, Egypt and Judah to the 28th year of Hezekiah, i. e., the year 700 B.C., the speech contained in chapter 29 would consequently have been delivered about the year 702. We have an aid to fixing the date in the words Isa_28:1 : “Add year to year, let the festivals complete their round.” According to our exposition the Prophet intimates by these words that after the expiration of the current year another year should complete its revolution, and then the hour of decision should arrive. That at this time the Egyptian alliance had been already, as is hinted in Isa_28:15, arranged to a considerable extent in secret consultations, is extremely probable. And when we find, Isa_30:2 sqq., the Jewish Ambassadors already on the way to Egypt, and hear, Isa_31:1 sqq., the futility of Egyptian help again emphatically asserted, and then read Isa_32:10 that, after an indefinite number of days above a year had expired, Jerusalem should be cut off from its fields and vineyards by the enemy, we may draw from all this the conclusion, that chaps, 30–32 were produced not long after chap. 29. But when we read, Isa_33:7 sqq., that the ambassadors of peace sent by Hezekiah return in sorrow, because the Assyrian king in addition to the great ransom (2Ki_18:14 sqq.) demands the surrender of the city itself; when that passage describes the occupation of the surrounding country by the enemy, in consequence of which Judah (Isa_33:23) is compared with a ship whose ropes no longer keep the mast firm, when at last the Lord, Isa_33:10, exclaims “Now will I rise; now will I be exalted; now will I lift up myself,” we shall not err in assuming that this prophecy belongs to the time immediately after the return of those ambassadors of peace, and was therefore uttered shortly before the summons given to Hezekiah by Rabshakeh. Each of the five speeches of our prophetic cycle begins with הוי. From the absence of הוֹי at the beginning of chap. 32, as well as from the tenor of this chapter, we see that it forms with chap. 31 one whole. הוי is found once, Isa_29:15, even in the middle of the discourse.
That Isaiah is the writer of these speeches is almost universally admitted. The doubts which were raised by Eichhorn in regard to separate parts, were seen by Gesenius to be unfounded (Comment. I. 2, p. 826); and Ewald’s conjecture as to the composition of chap. 33 by a disciple of Isaiah, has been sufficiently refuted by Knobel.
We have not in the section before us one organic discourse, but five speeches, which from the initial word common to all of them we shall designate as first woe, second woe, etc.
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I.—THE FIRST WOE
Chap. 28
1. SWAMP EPHRAIM, SWAMP JUDAH, AND WHAT ARISES OUT OF THE SWAMPS
Isa_28:1-13
1 Woe to the crown of pride, 1to the drunkards of Ephraim,
Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower,
Which are on the head of the fat 2valleys
Of them that are 3overcome with wine.
2 Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one;
Which, as a tempest of hail,
And a destroying storm,
As a flood of mighty waters overflowing,
Shall cast down to the earth with the hand.
3 The crown of pride, 4the drunkards of Ephraim,
Shall be trodden 5under feet.
4 And the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley,
Shall be a fading flower,
And as the 6hasty fruit before the summer;
Which, when he that looketh upon it seeth,
While it is yet in his hand he 7eateth it up.
5 In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory,
And for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people,
6 And for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment,
And for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate.
7 But they also have erred through wine,
And through strong drink are out of the way;
The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink;
They are swallowed up of wine,
They are out of the way through strong drink;
They err in vision, they stumble in judgment.
8 For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness,
So that there is no place clean.
9 Whom shall he teach knowledge?
And whom shall he make to understand 8doctrine?
Them that are weaned from the 9milk,
And drawn from the 10 breasts.
10 For precept 11must be. upon precept, precept upon precept;
Line upon line, line upon line;
Here a little, and there a little:
11 For with 12stammering lips and another tongue,
13Will he speak to this people.
12 To whom he said,
This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest;
And this is the refreshing;
Yet they would not hear.
13 But the word of the Lord 14was unto them
Precept upon precept, precept upon precept;
Line upon line, line upon line;
Here a little, and there a little;
That they might go, and fall backward,
And be broken, and snared, and taken.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Isa_28:1.צִיץ נֹבֵל as subst. cum adj. would be here abnormal, inasmuch as nothing can come between the nomen rectum and regens. The normal construction would be צִיץ צבי תכּארתו הַנֹּבֵל. But we know from Isa_1:30 and Isa_34:4, that Isaiah uses the participle of נָבֵל substantively in the signification of that which is withered, falling off. We have then to regard נֹבֵל here not as an adjective qualifying ציץ, but as a substantive coordinate with the other members in the series of genitives. Comp. on צִיצַת נבֵל Isa_28:4. The absolute state שׁמנים need cause no surprise. The word does not stand in the genitival relation to what follows. But two genitives are dependent on ראשׁ, namely,גיא שמנים and הלומי יין. [We prefer to say with Delitzsch that שְׁמָנִים, although standing connected with what follows, has the absolute form, the logical relation carrying it over the syntax. Comp. Isa_32:13; 1Ch_9:13.—D. M.].
Isa_28:3. The verb תרמסנה in the plural has no expressed subject. This is not necessary. For in the Hebrew language an ideal subject can be readily understood. The proud crown is Samaria. But this one great crown includes many smaller ones. The plural can be referred to this ideal multitude (comp. Naegelsbach’s Gr., S. 61, 1). [It appears to me simpler to say with the Jewish grammarians that the word crown is to be taken here as a collective noun.—D. M.]. In Isa_28:4 צִיצַת looks as a hint for the right understanding of נֹכֵל. We have already remarked on Isa_28:1 that נֹכֵלis to be taken as a substantive. If this could be seen from the mere grammatical construction, and from the parallel places, Isa_1:30; Isa_34:4, it is obvious from the word ציצת. For we clearly perceive from this nominal form which occurs only here, and which is certainly intentionally chosen, that נֹכֵל is to be regarded as a substantive, and as a coordinate member of the series of genitives.
Isa_28:7. כּוק, Kal, only here. Besides only Hiphil Isa_58:10. כּליליה (accus. loci) only here. Comp. Isa_16:3; Job_31:28.
Isa_28:9. On the preposition between the governing and the governed noun, see Naegelsbach’s Gr., § 63, 4 c.
Isa_28:12. אָבוּא for אָכוּ comp. Olshausen’s Gr., §226, b, p. 449 sq.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1 Samaria is still standing in proud pomp, but sunk in the vice of drunkenness. Therefore the Prophet proclaims a woe upon it (Isa_28:1), and announces that a mighty foe as a tempest will cast it to the ground (Isa_28:2), and tread the proud crown under foot (Isa_28:3). Then shall this glorious but already decaying flower quickly disappear, as an early fig which a man no sooner sees than he eats it (ver, 4). Not till then is the moment come when the Lord Himself will be to the remnant of His people for an adorning crown, and for a guiding spirit in judgment, and for strength in war (Isa_28:5-6). with Jerusalem it stands no better than with Samaria, There, too, the vice of drunkenness prevails fearfully, Even priests and prophets are under its sway. Even in the sacred moments of prophetic vision [?] and of judging, its effects are visible on them; the holy places are polluted by their vomiting (Isa_28:7-8). And, moreover, they mock the servant of Jehovah who warns them: Whom does he think that he has before him? Are they mere children ? (Isa_28:9). We hear from him continually trifling moral preaching, broken into little bits, which are scoffingly imitated by short, oft-repeated words, which resemble stammering sounds (Isa_28:10). For this they will have to hear the stammering sounds of a foreign nation of barbarous speech (Isa_28:11). Because they would not hear the word of Jehovah which offered rest and comfort to the weary (Isa_28:12), the will of God will be made known to them in words, which in sound resemble their scornful words, but in import are short, sharp words of command. That will of God has this significance, that they will be ensnared in inextricable ruin.
2 Woe——eateth it up.
Isa_28:1-4. It is no honor for Jerusalem, when it is said to her that she walks in the footsteps of Samaria. Jerusalem should be ashamed of this likeness, and seek to remove it. This is, doubtless, the reason why the Prophet first directs his look to Samaria in order to describe the there prevailing vice of literal (and in connection therewith of spiritual) drunkenness, and to threaten it with punishment from God. Thence his look passes over to Jerusalem. Micah had before Isaiah done just the same. In chap.Isa_1:6 sq. Micah first of all threatens Samaria with judgment, although “Judah and Jerusalem were the proper objects of his mission” (comp. Caspari,Micah the Morasthite, p. 105). Isaiah himself had once already (Isa_8:6 sqq.) announced that the storm of judgment would first come upon Ephraim, and thence spread into the territory of Judah. This way of the judgments of God is not determined simply by the geographic situation. There is also a deeper reason when Jerusalem goes in the ways of Samaria. On הוי comp. on Isa_1:4. עטרת besides only Isa_62:3. On גאות comp. on Isa_26:10. צִיץ stands in conjunction with נבל besides only Isa_40:7-8. On צבי תכּארתו comp. on Isa_4:2; Isa_13:19. This proud crown of Ephraim, this flower of his glorious ornament which lay upon the head of the valley of fatnesses (comp. Isa_5:1; Isa_25:6) i. e., on a beautiful hill commanding a fertile valley, is Samaria (1Ki_16:24; Amo_4:1; Amo_6:1). חֲלוּמֵי יַיִן (Comp. Isa_16:8) are vino obtusi, percussi. Compare Qui se percussit flore Liberi, Plant. Cas. 3, 5, 16; multo percussus tempora Baccho, Tib. 1, 2, 3; mero saucius Mart, 3, 6, 8; οἰνοπλήξ, οἰνόπληκτος, etc. Two images are here blended: namely, that Samaria is the crown of the hill, and the crown or garland on the head of the Ephraimites. The accumulation of predicates shows off the vain-glorious pride of the Ephraimites; and at the same time it is intimated by ציץ נכל and על ראש חלומי ייו that this garland, this crown will not endure long. For garland is withered, and the crown totters upon the head of the drunkards. For the avenger of this drunken pride is already prepared. The Lord has him at hand (Isa_2:12), He is the Assyrian. He will overturn to the ground (Amo_5:7) Ephraim’s glory with his hand (ביד stands over against the following כרגלים), as a storm of hail (Isa_25:4; Isa_30:30), as a shower of destruction (שׂער and קטב only here in Isaiah), as the rushing of mighty waterfloods (כַּבִּיר only Job_8:2; Job_15:10; Job_31:25; Job_34:17; Job_34:24; Job_36:5 bis and Isa_10:13; Isa_16:14; Isa_17:12, and in this place; שׁטף, Isa_28:15; Isa_28:17-18; Isa_8:7 sq., 10, 22; Isa_30:28; Isa_43:2; Isa_66:12). The meaning is that Ephraim, when standing, shall be dashed to the ground with the hand; when lying, shall be trodden with the feet. Isa_28:4. The flower of the fading one is like the expression הַקָּטָןכְּלֵי, Isa_22:24. This flower will be destroyed as quietly as an early fig, which is no sooner seen than it is eaten off-hand by him who discovers it. Such a dainty morsel (comp. Isa_9:10) is not laid by, as the other fruits which ripen at the usual time, which are afterwards eaten at table out of the dish or off the plate. This is the meaning of בעודה. The intentionally lengthened sentence יראה הראה אותה paints how the inquiring look passes slowly and gradually over the tree. The Prophet predicts not a hasty capture of the city (Samaria, as is known, did not fall till after a siege of three years, 2Ki_17:5; Schrader,The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the O.T., p. 157 sqq.), but a change of affairs in general, which should take place in a surprisingly brief time, considering the proud security that then prevailed. If our prophecy was delivered in one of the first years of Hezekiah, it was fulfilled in such a manner that four or five years later a kingdom of Israel was no longer in existence. Of this no one could have had a presentiment when the Prophet uttered these words.
3 In that day——to the gate.
Isa_28:5-6. It is self-evident that ביום הוא is again to be taken as a prophetic date, which is not to be judged according to the ordinary human measure. It simply intimates that when Ephraim has lost the deceptive earthly crown, Jehovah will take the place of it. Judgment must make it possible for the Lord to assume the place at the head of His people which belongs to Him. This has virtually and in principle taken place, as soon as judgment has done its work. But when and how this coronation will be outwardly exhibited, is known to God only. But although it should not happen till after thousands of years, still the word of the Lord is true, and faith may console itself with it in patience. שׁאר עמו is to be referred neither to the Israelites left in the land after the carrying away of the ten tribes, nor to the tribes of the kingdom of Judah, but to the total remnant primarily of Israel, of which those carried captive, yea, all who are still of the seed of Israel, form a part. For the Prophet here speaks first of all of Ephraim. This brief word of promise, Isa_28:5-6, makes, moreover, the impression as if the Prophet would herewith let Israel have his definite and complete portion of threatening and promise. For in what follows he refers to Judah only. But it is obvious, that Ephraim is included in the promises which are given to the remnant of all Israel (comp. on Isa_4:2 sqq.; Isa_6:13; Isa_7:3; Isa_10:20 sqq.). The expression עטרת צבי is found only here. We frequently meet with עטרת הכּארת (Pro_4:9; Pro_16:31; Isa_62:3; Jer_13:18; Eze_16:12; Eze_23:42). But Isaiah has here preferred for the sake of the assonance to join תכּארה with the term צכּירה (from צכּרin orbem ivit, orbiculus, hoop, diadem, besides only Eze_7:7; Eze_7:10). But Jehovah will be not only the source of the highest honor for His people, but also the source of the wisdom and strength so much wanted in the present time. Jehovah Himself, who is one with His Spirit, will fill the judges as a spirit of judgment. (Comp. Isa_4:4; comp. Isa_11:1; Isa_11:1 Kings12:22). ישב על המשׁכּט can mean to sit over a forensic cause as over the object submitted to the judge, and we may compare such places as 1Sa_25:13יָשְֽׁבוּ עַל־הַכֵּלִים or על stands in a modified signification equivalent to אֶל (לְ), and such places as 1Sa_20:24וַרֵּשֶׁב עַל־הַלֶּחֶם and Psa_29:10יּ׳ לַמַּבּוּל יָשַׁב may be compared. לְ is wanting before משׁיבי. The לְ which stands in the corresponding ליושׁב is to be regarded as carrying its force over to this clause. (Comp. Isa_30:1; Isa_48:17; Isa_61:7). To turn back the war towards the gate is to be understood of the repulse of the enemy either to the gate through which he entered, or back even to the enemy’s own gate. (2Sa_11:23; 2Ki_18:8; 1Ma_5:22)
4. But they also have erred——no place clean.
Isa_28:7-8. The Prophet now turns from Samaria to Jerusalem. With אֵלֶּח he points to his own countrymen in particular. They, too, are seized by a spirit of giddiness which arises from the fearfully prevailing vice of literal drunkenness. The Prophet ingeniously depicts the extent and intensity of this vice, through the accumulation of words related in form: Shagu—ta-u,—shagu—ta-u, shagu—paku. We hear and see as it were the reeling and staggering of the drunken company, שָׁגָה to reel, is used only here by Isaiah, תעה of a drunken person, also Isa_19:14 comp. Isa_21:4. How fearfully the vice of drunkenness had spread is seen from the fact that even priests and Prophets were addicted to it, and that not only in their private life; but they even performed their official functions in a state of intoxication. This is strictly forbidden in the law. Lev_10:8-9 (comp. Eze_44:21). The expression נבלעו מן־היין occurs only here. It does not mean that they in consequence of drinking wine have been swallowed up one of another, מִן does not here mark what is mediately or remotely causal; but it denotes the immediate cause. The wine itself has swallowed up those who greedily swallowed it (comp. Isa_28:4). Not only has the carouser the fit of intoxication, but the fit of intoxication has him. רֹאֶע stands only here for רֳאִי (Gen_16:13; 1Sa_16:12 et saepe) as חֹזֶה Isa_28:15 for חָזוּת. Even in such moments when they should be under the influence of the Spirit of God alone, they are by a blasphemous perversion under the influence of the spirit of alcohol. Not less wicked is it when judges, who should speak judgment in the name and Spirit of God (Exo_18:15 sq.; Deu_1:17; Deu_19:17; 2Ch_19:6), appear governed by that infernal spirit while performing this sacred function. That pronouncing judgment in the highest instance pertained to a priestly tribunal, may be seen from Deu_17:8 sqq. Comp. Isa_19:17; Herzog,R.-Encycl V. p. 58. The wickedness, therefore, of these priestly judges appears so much the greater. For they sit in a commission that has not trifling matters, but the most difficult and important causes to decide. Every one may convince himself that the Prophet has not said too much of the drunkenness of those people, who will take the trouble to visit the places where they sit. He will find there palpable traces of it; all tables full of filthy vomit (קִיא19:14 vomit, צֹאָה from יָצָאexcrementa, sordes, dirt, Isa_4:4; Isa_36:12), and consequently, no place to sit on, or to lay anything (בלי especially frequent in Job_8:11; Job_24:10; Job_31:39; Job_33:9 et saepe; in Isa_5:13-14; Isa_14:6; Isa_32:10; מקים comp. Isa_5:8).
5. Whom shall He teach——there a little.
Isa_28:9-10. In these words the Prophet lets his drunken adversaries themselves come on the scene. He makes them utter scoffing words, that he may give the same back to them in another sense as a threatening of punishment. They are themselves Prophets and Priests, and therefore full grown men, educated men, and not children. They, therefore, ask indignantly: Does he—namely the Prophet of Jehovah—not know whom he has before him? To whom does he think that he has to impart right knowledge? (דעה11:9). To whom has he to give understanding by his preaching? (שׁמועה Isa_28:19 and besides only Isa_53:1, in the signification “preaching, announcement” = the Greek ἀκοήRom_10:16-17; in another signification Isa_37:7). Is it to little children who have just been weaned from the milk (Isa_11:8), removed from the breasts (עַתִּיק in this sense only here in Isaiah)? And now the Prophet exhibits them as ridiculing the tenor of his preaching in monosyllabic words, which by their sound and repetition are designed to produce merriment, while he at the same time turns his opponents into ridicule, as these monosyllabic words admirably represent the stammering of a person intoxicated. צַו from צִוּהָ is praeceptum (besides here only Hos_5:11); קַו (comp. Isa_28:17; Isa_18:2; Isa_18:7; Isa_34:11; Isa_34:17; Isa_44:13) is cord, measuring cord, direction, rule. They reproach the Prophet with bringing forward a mass of little sentences, precepts, rules in wearisome repetition, and without a right plan and order, here a little, there a little (זְעֻיר besides Job_36:2, comp. מִזְעָר10:25; Isa_16:14; Isa_24:6; Isa_29:17). The contemptuous designation σπερμολόγος which the Athenian Philosophers gave the Apostle Paul, has been fitly compared (Act_17:18).
6. For with stammering——and taken.
Isa_28:11-13. The Prophet replies to this mocking speech, and concedes that it is to a certain extent accurate and just. For these scoffing words will indeed be spoken. But not as those drunkards think. For (כִּי Isa_28:11) the Lord will speak them to them by a foreign and hostile people, whose utterances will be to them as stammering and strange jargon. לָעֵגbalbutiens, balbus, barbarus is found besides only Psa_35:16. In Isa_33:19 Isaiah uses in the same sense, and likewise of the Assyrian language the participle Niphal נִלְעָג. It is easy to conceive that the Assyrian language, as being much less cultivated than their own, and having only the three fundamental vowels a, i, u, made upon the Israelites the impression of being as the lisping of children. What a Nemesis! Because this people to whom the Lord spake words of comfort in its own mother tongue would not hear them, it must hear from the enemy’s mouth harsh sounds, which fall on the ear like the scoffing words uttered against the Prophet, but have a quite different meaning; for they are words of command intending the destruction of the vanquished and captured people. The words זאת המנוחה are taken from Mic_2:10. Micah there reproaches the false Prophets with withholding from the people the genuine word of God, which is affectionate and kind, and with instigating the people with lies to forsake that wherein it would truly find rest. [This is hardly the sense of the passage referred to in Micah.—D. M.]. In opposition to this Isaiah characterizes the genuine preaching of Jehovah by the words זאת המנוחה. For justly in reference to that of which the false Prophets say לֹא־זֹאת הַמְּנוּחָה, the real Prophet must say זֹאת הַמְנוּחָה. This true “rest of the people of God,” says Isaiah, Jehovah has not merely shown from afar. He has also commanded to put the weary souls longing for salvation in possession of it, (חָנִיחַ to procure rest for one, Isa_14:3), and has offered the place of rest, i. e., the real means of grace and salvation. מנוחה means elsewhere, place of rest; but here I take it in the sense of rest (comp. Isa_66:1) in opposition to מרגעה the place of rest (ἅπ. λεγ. Comp. Jer_6:16). Isaiah, in thus referring to a word of his colleague Micah, which he confirms and applies, reaches him here again the fraternal hand. The words appear too general for us to find any political allusions in them. When in Isa_28:13 the scornful words of the Prophet’s adversaries are employed as a weapon turned against themselves, it seems to me that what makes it possible to put them in the enemies’ mouth lies not merely in the effect upon the ear, in the resemblance to stammering sounds, but in the actual meaning also. As we found in קַו־קַו, Isa_18:2; Isa_18:7 the meaning of a short, sharp order, this meaning seems still more to lie in the present place. The Israelites will hear nothing but such short, monosyllabic words. But they will be words full of meaning, whose effect will be seen in what we read at the close of Isa_28:13. For to fall backward and be broken and snared and taken captive will be the doom of the presumptuous people. Isa_28:13 b, from וְכָֽשְׁלוּ, is an almost literal reproduction of Isa_8:15.
Footnotes:
[1]of the drunkards of Ephraim.
[2]valley.
[3]Heb. broken.
[4]of the drunkards of Ephraim.
[5]Heb with feet.
[6]early fig.
[7]Heb. Swalloweth.
[8]Heb. the hearing.
[9]followed by note of interrogation.
[10]followed by note of interrogation.
[11]Or, hath been.
[12]Heb. stammerings of lips.
[13]Or, he hath spoken.
[14]shall come.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–7 strong one--the Assyrian (Isa 10:5).
strong one--the Assyrian (Isa 10:5).
cast down--namely, Ephraim (Isa 28:1) and Samaria, its crown.
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with . . . hand--with violence (Isa 8:11).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 7 This chapter was probably written in Hezekiah’s reign, and…
THE FIRST WOE.
This chapter was probably written in Hezekiah’s reign, and its utterance is against Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, before its downfall and depopulation under Shalmanezer, king of Assyria.
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1. Woe — A calamity pronounced as impending.
Crown of pride — A poetic figure describing the site of Samaria, a beautiful, oblong hill, fertile to its summit, rising from the centre of a fertile plain or valley, behind which is a circular range of mountains. The whole is verdant with grass, grain, olive groves, and vineyards. Upon this place and people serious events are about to fall, for reasons in part contained in epithets characterizing them, namely, their pride and intemperance.
Drunkards of Ephraim — So the people of Israel are called from the name of its strongest tribe.
On the head — On Samaria’s heights, overlooking valleys below rich and fertile, but producing chiefly that which only made the people worse. Drunkenness, however, is mentioned, not as the only prevalent vice, but as the crying one.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–8 1. In a single image of great beauty the…
1. In a single image of great beauty the prophet describes the picturesque situation of the city, the tone of its society, and its ripeness for judgment. Samaria, with its ramparts and white terraced streets crowning the summit of a low hill, which rises in the middle of a fertile valley (1Ki_16:24), is compared to the chaplet of flowers that wreathes the flushed temples of a reveller (cf. Wisd. Son_2:7-8). But the long carousal is nearly over, the wreath is already faded and soon (Isa_28:3) will be dashed to the ground. The verse should be read:
Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim,
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And (to) the fading flower of his glorious beauty,
Which is upon the fat valley of the wine-smitten.
overcome (lit. “struck down”) with wine] (οἰνοπλῆγες) the last stage of intoxication. Hard drinking is compared to a combat between the toper and his drink, in which the latter is victorious, ch. Isa_16:8.
1–4. The fate of the drunkards of Ephraim. On the luxury and debauchery of Samaria, see Amo_3:12; Amo_3:15; Amo_4:1; Amo_6:1; Amo_6:6.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 (1) Woe to the crown of pride . .…
XXVIII.
(1) Woe to the crown of pride . . .—Better, the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim. The chapter is remarkable, as showing that the prophet’s work was not limited to Judah and Jerusalem, but extended to the northern kingdom. The warning was clearly uttered before the capture of Samaria by Salmaneser, or, more probably, by Sargon, and paints in vivid colours—reminding us in part of Amo_6:4-6, not without a side glance at the like vices in Jerusalem (Isa_22:13)—the license into which the capital of the northern kingdom had fallen. With a bold personification the words paint (1) the banquet with its revellers, crowned, as in the later days of Rome, with wreaths of flowers; and (2) Samaria itself as such a wreath, once beautiful, now fading, crowning the “head” of the “fat,” or luxuriant, valley (literally, valley of oils, or, fat things) in which the revellers held their feasts. Cheyne notes that the inscription of Salmaneser records that the tribute of Jehu consisted of bowls, cups, and goblets of gold, as illustrating the luxury of the palace of Samaria (Records of the Past, v. 41). The LXX. strangely renders the last clause, “drunk without wine,” as if from a reminiscence of Isa_29:9, and gives the “hirelings of Ephraim” instead of “drunkards.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–8 Vers. 1-4. A WARNING TO SAMARIA. The prophet has…
Vers. 1-4. A WARNING TO SAMARIA. The prophet has now east his eagle glance over the whole world and over all time. He has denounced woe upon all the principal nations of the earth (Isaiah 13-23), glanced at the destruction of the world itself, (Isa_24:17-20) and sung songs over the establishment of Christ"s kingdom, and the ingathering of the nations into it (Isaiah 25-27). In the present chapter he returns to the condition of things in his own time and among his own people. After a brief warning, addressed to Samaria, he turns to consider the condition of Judah, which he accuses of following the example of Samaria, of perishing through self-indulgence and lack of knowledge (vers. 7-12). He then proceeds to expostulate seriously with the "rulers of Jerusalem," on whom lies the chief responsibility for its future.
Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkard; rather, of the drunkards, The "drunkards of Ephraim," or of the ten tribes, were at once intoxicated with wine (Amo_4:1 Amo_6:6) and with pride. (Amo_6:13) As the external aspect of affairs grew mere and more threatening through the advances of Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser, they gave themselves up more and more to self-indulgence and luxury, lay upon beds of ivory, drank wine from bowls, feasted to the sound of the viol, and even invented fresh instruments of music. (Amo_6:4, Amo_6:5) At the same time, they said in their hearts, "Have we not taken by our own strength?". (Amo_6:13) They persisted in regarding themselves as secure, when even ordinary political foresight might have seen that their end was approaching. Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower; rather, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty. The "glorious beauty" of Samaria was a beauty of magnificent luxury. "Summer" and "winter houses," distinct each from the other; (Amo_3:15) "ivory palaces"; (1Ki_22:39 Amo_3:15) a wealth of "gardens, vineyards, fig-orchards, and olive yards"; (Amo_4:9) residences of "hewn stone"; (Amo_5:11) feasts enlivened with "the melody of viols"; (Amo_5:23) "beds of ivory"; (Amo_6:4) "wine in bowls"; (Amo_6:6) "chief ointments"; (Amo_6:6) constituted a total of luxurious refinement beyond which few had proceeded at the time, and which Isaiah was fain to recognize, in a worldly point of view, as "glorious" and "beautiful." But the beauty was of a kind liable to fade, and it was already fading under the sirocco of Assyrian invasion. Which are on the head of the fat valleys; rather, which is on the head (or, which decks the head) of the rich valley. Samaria was built on a hill of an oval form, which rose up in the midst of a fertile valley shut in by mountains. The prophet identifies the valley with the kingdom itself, and then personifies it, and regards its head as crowned by the fading flower of Samaria"s beauty.
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Vers. 1, 3. The drunkards of Ephraim.
While Scripture, from first to last, upholds the moderate use of wine as cheering and "making glad the heart of man," it is distinct and severe in its denunciations of drunkenness and unrestrained revelry. The son who was "stubborn and rebellious, a glutton and a drunkard," was to be brought by his parents before the ciders under the Jewish Law, and "stoned with stones that he might die". (Deu_21:20, Deu_21:21) Nabal"s drunkenness and churlishness together caused him to be "smitten by the Lord that he died". (1Sa_25:38) Solomon warns his son against drunkenness by reminding him of the fact, which experience had sufficiently proved by his time, that "the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty". (Pro_23:21) The "drunkards of Ephraim" are denounced in unsparing terms by Isaiah and Amos. Christians are taught that drunkards "shall not inherit the kingdom of God", (1Co_6:10) and bidden, "If any man that is called a brother be a drunkard, with such a one, no, not to eat". (1Co_5:11) Drunkenness and gluttony are naturally coupled together, as being each of them an abuse of God"s good gifts to man; but drunkenness is far the worse of the two, since, by robbing man of his self-control, it is apt to lead him on to a number of other sins and crimes, and thus, while not perhaps worse in itself, it is in its consequences far more injurious than gluttony. Drunkenness is often pleaded as an excuse for the crimes whereto it leads; but some of the wisest amongst ancient legislators were so far from accepting this plea, that they doubled the penalty for an offence if a man was drunk when he committed it (Arist., "Eth. Nic.," 3:5, In the case of the "drunkards of Ephraim," it may be suspected that the desire to drown their cares in wine was at the root of their drunkenness. (comp. Isa_22:13 Pro_31:6, Pro_31:7) But, however we may pity those who so act, we cannot excuse them. Difficulties are a call upon us to use to the utmost the intellect wherewith we are endowed by God, if so be we may anyhow devise an escape from our troubles not a reason for our pushing reason from its seat, and rushing blindfold on calamity.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-6. Condition of Samaria.
I DENUNCIATION OF WOE. The condition of Samaria was like that of Jerusalem. And judgment must first fall upon Samaria, and then upon Jerusalem. (Isa_8:6; cf. Mic_1:6) Drunkenness is named," not as the root of the national evil, but rather as its flower. The appalling thing is that when all is on the point of collapsing, those responsible for the state should be given up to careless self-indulgence" (Cheyne). Samaria is described as the city of the "proud crown." So in Greece Athens was called the city of the violet crown, and Thebes the "well-crowned." Some explain the crown of the towers; others think that the mere beauty of the hill on which the city stands, with its cultivated terraces, covered with corn and with fig and olive trees, has given rise to the figure. But a worm is at the root of all this beauty, and Samaria must die. Drunkenness may stand for sensuality in general, which saps the root of a nation"s life. The crown, or chaplet, alludes also to the custom among Greeks, Romans, and Jews, of wearing a chaplet of flowers at feasts. In the Book of Wisdom we read"Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments: And let no flower of the spring pass by us: Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds, before they be withered. (RAPC Wis 2:8)
II THE IMPENDING DESTRUCTION. Jehovah has an unflinching instrument for destruction. And, like an overwhelming tempest and flood of waters, destruction will come down on the devoted city. The bright crown shall be trampled underfoot; and Ephraim"s beauty shall be swallowed up with all the haste with which one devours the special delicacy of the "early fig". (cf. Hos_9:10 Mic_7:1 Hab_3:12 Jer_24:2) It ripens in June. The whole is a picture of sudden and utter destruction. (For the Assyrian king as agent in the hand of Jehovah, cf. 2Ki_17:3-6. For the storm of hail as a symbol of desolation, cf. Job_27:21 Hos_13:15. And for the flood as a representation of hostile devastation, (cf. Psa_95:5 Jer_46:7, Jer_46:8) In the moral order, sudden destruction is always connected with great impiety. The triumphing of the wicked is short; and while they speak of peace, sudden destruction arriveth. "What Isaiah declared about the kingdom of Israel applies also to the whole world. By their ingratitude, men prevent all the goodness which the Lord has bestowed upon them from reaching maturity; for we abuse his blessings and corrupt them by our wickedness. The consequence is that hasty and short-lived fruits are produced, which cannot yield us continual nourishment" (Calvin). Luxury blinds, blindness leads to stumbling, and presently to a sudden fall.
III FULFILMENTS OF MESSIANIC PROMISE. Here again the sky clears, and the star of hope glimmers. To the converted remnant Jehovah will be as a glittering Crown and a splendid Diadem. The royalty of the Divine King shall be more glorious than the famed beauty of Samaria, whose crown shall have been trampled in the dust, and his government a fairer chaplet to adorn the Divine seat. There will be a true beauty and glory in the Messianic times. Moreover, there will be a spirit of justice and sound intelligence diffused. The priests, the spiritual leaders, will be especially imbued with it. (cf. Deu_17:8-12 Exo_21:22 2Ch_19:5-8) But the magistracy in general will be enlightened and instructed by the Spirit of God. Further, there will be valor in the field, so that the generals and their soldiers will be able to turn back war to the gate probably of the city whence their foes came. (2Sa_11:23, "And we were upon them, even unto the entering of the gate There will, in short, in the ideal or Messianic government, be a government strong both internally and externally, wisdom and justice in home administration, strength and valor towards the foe without. These are needed for every empire and kingdom; and they come from God. "The Lord is our Defense." "Magistrates will not be able to rule and administer justice in a city, and military generals will not be able to repel enemies, unless the Lord shall direct them." To place our confidence in the world is to gather flowers, which forthwith fade and decay. We then seek to be happy without God, that is, without happiness itself. If we seek protection and good in God, then no calamities can prevent him from adorning the Church. When it shall appear that everything is on the eve of destruction, God will still be a Crown of glory to his people (Calvin). J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-4, 7, 8. The evil of excess: a sermon on intemperance.
The allusion here is to the prevalent baneful vice of intemperance. The evils which are connected with it, and which constitute its condemnation, are such as belong to other kinds of excess, but especially and emphatically to it.
I HONOR IS HUMILIATED BY IT. "The crown of pride is trodden under feet" (vers. 1, 3). The proud city, which was, alas! a city given up to drunkenness, should be brought down to the very dust. Intemperance causes the man who has held the highest position to become despised by every neighbor that has the common virtue of sobriety; it takes the crown of honor from the brow; it humbles even to the ground the pitiable victims of vice.
II BEAUTY IS SPOILED BY IT. Its "glorious beauty becomes a faded flower" (vers. 1, 4). Excess is found, not only in the vulgar, in the illiterate, in the uncomely, but also in the refined, in the accomplished, in the beautiful, of the sons and daughters of men. When it is found there it soon does its fatal work. The beautiful is soon gone both from the form and from the spirit; the green leaf withers, the exquisite bloom fades. From that which once attracted every eye, all men turn away grieved, if not positively repelled.
III STRENGTH IS SAPPED BY IT. "Overcome with wine" (ver. 1). The man whose strength is composed of so many elements material, mental, spiritual is positively beaten, overcome, made helpless, useless, ludicrous, despicable, by a few glasses of liquor! It is a painful, shameful instance of strength being mastered by that which it ought to be able to subdue.
IV WISDOM IS MISLED BY IT. "They have erred through wine... are out of the way... they err in vision, they stumble in judgment" (ver. 7). They who, if their faculties were unclouded, would perceive truth, and have spiritual insight, and gain the guidance which Heaven grants to them that seek it, are so weakened in mental power, or so bereft of spiritual strength, that they grope in darkness when they might walk in the light of the Lord.
V INFLUENCE IS FORFEITED BY IT. "The priest and the prophet have erred." Even those who, but for guilty excess, might have led the people in every good way, are caught in the toils, are numbered among the victims, and their power is gone, their influence is forfeited. A drunken prophet is one whom all unite to spurn, and his word is worth less than nothing to the cause he pleads.
VI IT LEADS ON AND DOWN TO THAT WHICH IS LOATHSOME. (Ver. 8.)
VII IT CONSUMES ITS CONSUMER. (Vers. 4, 7.) Man may say that they swallow their wine, but it is truer to say of many that their wine "swallows" them; for it devours their substance, their character, their reputation, their prospects. Everything is "eaten up" like the "hasty fruit before the summer," speedily and utterly.
VIII GOD IS DECIDEDLY AND EMPHATICALLY AGAINST IT. (Ver. 2.) He has pronounced against it in strong terms, and he brings down a heavy hand upon it; the enemy which he calls against those guilty of excess is "a mighty and strong one:" poverty, shame, remorse, loneliness, early death, and final exclusion from his presence. C. (1Co_6:10)
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Ver. 1. The woe of the drunkard.
On this subject there is grave danger of saying extravagant, unqualified, and unreasonable things. The abstract rightness or wrongness of using strong drinks must be decided by the individual judgment. Enough now to say that no man with the spirit of a patriot, much less with the spirit of a Christian who is his brother"s keeper, can observe the growth of drinking habits in modern society without serious alarm; no mothers without grave anxiety for their sons; no wives without deep concern for their husbands and themselves. The common speech about drink too often leaves the impression that the evil of it lies in the drink itself, and so tends to take our minds from the much more serious fact that the evil of drink lies in us, and in its relation to us in feebleness of will, and lack of self-restraint and self-control.
I WHEREIN LIES THE PERIL OF STRONG DRINK? Precisely in its strength, in its raging. Strong drink is raging." There is produced by it an elevation and excitement that are beyond nature; according to the differences of men"s dispositions, it is either an elevation, or a raging of folly or of violence. Our peril lies in yielding to the unnatural or the unnecessary.
1. The unnatural. Every man is in duty bound to develop all his faculties up to the limit of their capacity. But every man is in duty bound also not to develop some to the neglect of others; and not to excite any to a degree beyond his full and perfect self-control. So far as he does he ceases to be a true man; a foreign power has taken the place of his central will, and he is, in fact, a man possessed and ruled by an evil force, by a devil. This may be illustrated by showing
(1) the unnatural effect produced by strong drink on the physical frame;
(2) the effect on the moral nature, especially in exciting sensual passions;
(3) the influence on the children and descendants of the self-indulgent. This is so important a point, and brings to view such obscure, but painful facts, that a few may be set down from which selections may be made. Gall relates the ease of a Russian family, where the father and grandfather bad both died prematurely from the effects of intoxication, arid the grandson manifested from the age of five years the most decided taste for strong liquors. M. Morel says, "I have never seen the patient cured of his propensity whose tendencies to drinking were derived from the hereditary predisposition given to him by his parents." He gives also the history of four generations of a family. First generation: the father a habitual drunkard, killed in a public-house brawl. Second generation: son inherited the father"s habits, which gave rise to attacks of mania, terminating in paralysis and death. Third generation: grandson strictly sober, but full of hypochondriacal and imaginary fears of persecution, and had homicidal tendencies. Fourth generation: great-grandson, very limited intelligence, an attack of madness when sixteen years old, terminating in stupidity nearly amounting to idiocy. With him the race became extinct. We can conceive no revelation of the unnaturalness of the condition and relations produced by strong drink more impressive than this.
2. It is unnecessary; for it satisfies no demand of the true manhood; only the demands of a depraved, disordered, and diseased taste. The best that can be said of it is that it may be a medicine. It is now well established that it is not a necessary food.
II WHO AMONG US LIE EXPOSED TO THE TEMPTATIONS OF STRONG DRINK? This may be answered with great plainness, simplicity, and practical force.
1. Those who are born into a heritage of drinking tendencies.
2. Those who have some ability in song or entertaining, and so are enticed into company and treated for the sake of the pleasure they give (compare the case of the poet Burns).
3. Those who have idle time which can be spent in inns and hotels.
4. Those who have great business energy and enterprise without the restraining influence of high moral principle.
5. Those who, having little pleasure in intelligent occupations, seek excitement in the indulgence of bodily passion.
6. Those who have unhappy or uncomfortable homes.
7. Those whose daily work takes them to houses where they are treated to drink. All are in special peril at holiday or convivial seasons, and in times of convalescence from disease, or of family trouble. No one of us can venture to say, amidst the enticements of modern social life, "I shall never fall. I shall never be a drunkard." He neither knows himself, nor the subtlety of the evil, who speaks so confidently. Our power to stand lies in our laying hold of One who is stronger than ourselves, and keeping Up the prayer, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Every day and everywhere, with our eyes on God, we should be saying, "Hold thou us up, and we shall be safe. R.T.
Vers. 5, 6. Beauty, wisdom, and strength for us in God.
Kings wear crowns; kings decide causes and give judgment; kings lead armies to battle; so kings must be chiefly in the thought of the prophet here. But kings are, or ought to be, the representatives of the nations they rule; the realized ideals of the nation, the persons in whom they can see their best selves. Hezekiah was in some good sense such a king. What God was to him, God would be to all his people; Isaiah even says, God was to the residue of his people, to the pious ones of Judah, when Samaria was taken, and the kingdom of Israel destroyed. The prophet first speaks admiringly of them, and then finds occasion for the qualifying of his praise (vers. 7, 8). We may consider what God can be to his people, when they open heart and life to his incomings and inworkings.
I CHARACTER FOR THE FELLOWSHIPS OF LIFE COMES OF GOD. Upon character the pleasantness and graciousness of life unions and associations almost entirely depend. Those who have the true helpful and sanctifying power among us are those who have the "beauty of the Lord their God upon them." There are spheres of life in which talent tells; but in homes and society it is character that tells. After illustrating and enforcing this, the importance of correcting the error of sentiment, which regards character as a purely human growth and attainment, should be shown. So easily do we say, "Character, we can win that ourselves." So needful is it to show that "character is of God." It comes out of the circumstances which God provides, and out of the relations in which God sets us, and through sorrows, bearings, and strugglings, which God sanctifies. St. Paul says, "I am what I am." "His grace on me was not in vain.
II WISDOM FOR THE AFFAIRS OF LIFE COMES OF GOD. We have natural skill for some forms of business or of profession; but who endowed us with the natural ability? We gain practical skill amidst the experiences of life; but who renews the mental powers and bodily health, and presides over impressions made? A thousand complex conditions come in every life: who guides to right decisions, directing the judgment in ways of truth? "This wisdom cometh from above.
III STRENGTH FOR THE DEMANDS OF LIFE COMES OF GOD. The psalmist lifts a thankful heart to God who "renews our youth like the eagle"s." He "giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength." No experience of life is more assured, none brings a deeper rest to our hearts than this we are weak, then we may be strong" in God. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 7 Woe to the crown of pride
Isa_28:1-6
Woe to the crown of pride
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Chapter twenty-eight is the first of a great group of representative discourses, chaps.
28-32, all dealing with the relation of Judah to Assyria, and all enforcing the same political principles. (Prof. Driver, D. D.)
Overcome with wine
Words are scarcely possible with which to express greater sorrow and calamity falling on those who are overcome with wine. God is said to be against them. Their beauty and pride shall fade away. They shall err in judgment; shall have dim vision of truth and duty; shall lose all susceptibility of moral and religious impressions; shall speak with stammering tongue; shall be ensnared with all evil. Their condition shall be heart sickening and hopeless.
I. A TERRIBLE CONTRAST. Ephraim in this passage stands for the kingdom of the ten tribes: the drunkards of Ephraim for its dissipated and dissolute people; the crown of Samaria for its capital city; though there is possibly reference here to the magnificent hill on which the city stood. Its site was a chosen one, than which, according to Rawlinson, none could be found, in all Palestine of greater combined strength, fertility, and beauty, having in these respects largely the advantage over Jerusalem. It was, however, full of drunkards. Intemperance was not only the prevailing iniquity of the place, but a form of sin and shame which was the fruitful source of innumerable afflictions and calamities. The figure is of a people smitten, beaten, knocked down with wine, as with a hammer; laid prostrate and helpless on the ground in utter bewilderment, and unconscious as to what would happen to them, their homes, or their nation. This was the doom represented as a Divine judgment upon them; but really the natural and inevitable result of their being overcome with wine. Let all men be warned, especially the young. The loss of everything desirable goes with the loss of control over appetite. But the contrast is as terrible in communities, cities, and nations where drunkenness prevails! In the place of industry, indolence obtains; in the place of intelligence, ignorance abounds; in the place of thrift and comfort, poverty and wretchedness exist; in the place of honour and virtue, dishonour and vice run riot; until life becomes scarcely endurable for one who would keep his crown of pride and preserve the glorious beauty of true manhood.
II. THE TERRIBLE POWER OF APPETITE. It is absolutely destructive of the whole man! It is a giant bringing his captive into complete subjection. All goes wrong with a man when he is under the influence of strong drink! He cannot walk as a man; cannot work as a man; cannot talk as a man; cannot think as a man; nor is he capable of accurate judgment in matters of small or large concern. He tramples under his feet the most sacred associations and obligations of life; he loses his love as a husband, father, son; he breaks hearts that cling to him more fondly than to aught else in all the world; he finally becomes so bound as to render it practically impossible for him to cast off his chains! All this comes not only to such as may be termed the ignorant and naturally vicious, but to the learned and naturally virtuous. Men of culture and refinement, of education and position, of inheritances and attainments, of rank and station, give way to the same indulgences and fall into the same deeps! Fathers send the consuming currents through the veins of their sons. Mothers give birth to children whose feverish bodies flame with hidden fires.
III. THE DUTY OF EARNEST OPPOSITION AND FEARLESS WARFARE AGAINST INTEMPERANCE. We read here of a residue of the people, to whom the Lord of hosts would be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate. The literal meaning of this is that after the pride of the apostate tribes had fallen, they who remained true to God and to themselves should glory and delight in Jehovah as their chief privilege and honour. This was the prophecy, and it was blessedly fulfilled. When Israel was finally ruined, Judah rose to power under Hezekiah. He resisted all enticements, and in every way sought the reformation of his people. Many were held back from being overcome with wine. These were the residue of the people, and for their sake God endued the magistrates and counsellors with the spirit of discernment and equity; also gave courage to the captains who led forth their troops from the gate of Jerusalem and forced the war even to the gates of their enemies. The lesson here is one of united and fearless opposition to intemperance, and to whatever exposes the people to its ravages. While all practicable efforts should be made to reform those who are addicted to their cups, special care should be taken of children and youth that they may be kept from forming the drink habit.
1. The home should present no temptation on this line.
2. Each Sunday school should be a temperance society, organised and equipped for work.
3. The physical effects of intemperance should be taught in all our public schools.
4. Pastors, too, have a duty on this line. (Justin E. Twitchell)
Samaria
The beautiful city of Samaria crowning a low hill rising from the valley is like a garland on the brow of the revellers. The crown is already faded. (A. B. Davidson, LL. D.)
Overcome with wine
Literally, struck down. Hard drinking is compared to a combat between the toper and his drink, in which the latter is victorious. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Dry drunkenness.
Men are drunk, but not with wine; sometimes they are drunk with prosperity, with vanity, with evil thoughts, passionate desires. Men may be sober, and yet may be drunk. Men may be total abstainers from wine, and may yet go straight down to hell. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1
CHAPTER VIII
GODS COMMONPLACE
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ABOUT 725 B.C.
Isaiah 28
THE twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Isaiah is one of the greatest of his prophecies. It is distinguished by that regal versatility of style, which places its author at the head of Hebrew writers. Keen analyses of character, realistic contrasts between sin and judgment, clever retorts and epigrams, rapids of scorn, and "a spate" of judgment, but for final issue a placid stream of argument banked by sweet parable-such are the literary charms of the chapter, which derives its moral grandeur from the force with which its currents set towards faith and reason, as together the salvation of states, politicians, and private men. The style mirrors life about ourselves, and still tastes fresh to thirsty men. The truths are relevant to every day in which luxury and intemperance abound, in which there are eyes too fevered by sin to see beauty in simple purity, and minds so surfeited with knowledge or intoxicated with their own cleverness, that they call the maxims of moral reason commonplace and scorn religious instruction as food for babes.
Some time when the big, black cloud was gathering again on the north, Isaiah raised his voice to the magnates of Jerusalem: "Lift your heads from your wine-bowls; look north. The sunshine is still on Samaria, and your fellow-drinkers there are revelling in security. But the storm creeps up behind. They shall certainly perish soon; even you cannot help seeing that. Let it scare you, for their sin is yours, and that storm will not exhaust itself on Samaria. Do not think that your clever policies, alliance with Egypt or the treaty with Assyria herself, shall save you. Men are never saved from death and hell by making covenants with them. Scorners of religion and righteousness, except ye cease being sceptical and drunken, and come back from your diplomacy to faith and reason, ye shall not be saved! This destruction that looms is going to cover the whole earth. So stop your running to and fro across it in search of alliances. He that believeth shall not make haste. Stay at home and trust in the God of Zion, for Zion is the one thing that shall survive." In the parable, which closes the prophecy, Isaiah offers some relief to this dark prospect: "Do not think of God as a mere disaster-monger, maker of terrors for men. He has a plan, even in catastrophe, and this deluge, which looks like destruction for all of us, has its method, term, and fruits, just as much as the husbandmans harrowing of the earth or threshing of the corn."
The chapter with this argument falls into four divisions.
I. THE WARNING FROM SAMARIA
(Isa_28:1-6)
They had always been hard drinkers in North Israel. Fifty years before, Amos flashed judgment on those who trusted in the mount of Samaria, "lolling upon their couches and gulping their wine out of basons," women as well as men. Upon these same drunkards of Ephraim, now soaked and "stunned with wine," Isaiah fastens his Woe. Sunny the sky and balmy the air in which they lie, stretched upon flowers by the heads of their fat valleys- a land that tempts its inhabitants with the security of perpetual summer.But Gods swift storm drives up the valley-hail, rain, and violent streams from every gorge. Flowers, wreaths, and pampered bodies are trampled in the mire. The glory of sunny Ephraim is as the first ripe fig a man findeth, and "while it is yet in his hand, he eateth it up." But while drunken magnates and the flowers of a rich land are swept away, there is a residue who can and do abide even that storm, to whom the Lord Himself shall be for a crown, "a spirit of justice to him that sitteth for justice, and for strength to them that turn back the battle at the gate."
Isaiahs intention is manifest, and his effort a great one. It is to rob passion of its magic and change mens temptations to their disgusts, by exhibiting how squalid passion shows beneath disaster, and how gloriously purity shines surviving it. It is to strip luxury and indulgence of their attractiveness by drenching them with the storm of judgment, and then not to leave them stunned, but to rouse in them a moral admiration and envy by the presentation of certain grand survivals of the storm-unstained justice and victorious valour. Isaiah first sweeps the atmosphere, hot from infective passion, with the cold tempest from the north. Then in the clear shining after rain he points to two figures, which have preserved through temptation and disaster, and now lift against a smiling sky, the ideal that those corrupt judges and drunken warriors have dragged into the mire-"him that sitteth for justice and him that turneth back the battle at the gate." The escape from sensuality, this passage suggests, is twofold. There is the exposure to nature where Gods judgments sweep their irresistible way; and then from the despair, which the unrelieved spectacle of judgment produces, there is the recovery to moral effort through the admiration of those purities and heroisms, that by Gods Spirit have survived.
When God has put a conscience into the art or literature of any generation, they have followed this method of Isaiah, but not always to the healthy end which he reaches. To show the slaves of Circe the physical disaster impending-which you must begin by doing if you are to impress their brutalised minds-is not enough. The lesson of Tennysons "Vision of Sin" and of Arnolds "New Sirens," that night and frost, decay and death, come down at last on pampered sense, is necessary, but not enough. Who stops there remains a defective and morbid moralist. When you have made the sensual shiver before the disease that inevitably awaits them, you must go on to show that there are men who have the secret of surviving the most terrible judgments of God, and lift their figures calm and victorious against the storm-washed sky. Preach the depravity of men, but never apart from the possibilities that remain in them. It is Isaiahs health as a moralist that he combines the two. No prophet ever threatened judgment more inexorable and complete than he. Yet he never failed to tell the sinner how possible it was for him to be different. If it were necessary to crush men in the mud, Isaiah would not leave them there with the hearts of swine. But he put conscience in them, and the envy of what was pure, and the admiration of what was victorious. Even as they wallowed, he pointed them to the figures of men like themselves, who had survived and overcome by the Spirit of God. Here we perceive the ethical possibilities that lay in his fundamental doctrine of a remnant. Isaiah never crushed men beneath the fear of judgment, without revealing to them the possibility and beauty of victorious virtue. Had we lived in those great days, what a help he had been to us-what a help he may be still!-not only firm to declare that the wages of sin is death, but careful to effect that our humiliation shall not be despair, and that even when we feel our shame and irretrievableness the most, we shall have the opportunity to behold our humanity crowned and seated on the throne from which we had fallen, our humanity driving back the battle from the gate against which we had been hopelessly driven! That seventh verse sounds like a trumpet in the ears of enervated and despairing men.
II. GODS COMMONPLACE
(Isa_28:7-13)
But Isaiah has cast his pearls before swine. The men of Jerusalem, whom he addresses, are too deep in sensuality to be roused by his noble words. "Even priest and prophet stagger through strong drink"; and the class that should have been the conscience of the city, responding: immediately to the word of God, "reel in vision and stumble in judgment." They turn upon Isaiahs earnest message with tipsy mens insolence. Isa_28:9-10 should be within inverted commas, for they are the mocking reply of drunkards over their cups. "Whom is he going to teach knowledge, and upon whom is he trying to force the Message," as he calls it? "Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts?" Are we school-children, that he treats us with his endless platitudes and repetitions.-"precept upon precept and precept upon precept, line upon line and line upon line, here a little and there a little." So did these bibulous prophets, priests, and politicians mock Isaiahs messages of judgment, wagging their heads in mimicry of his simple, earnest tones. "We must conceive the abrupt, intentionally short, reiterated and almost childish words of Isa_28:10 as spoken in mimicry, with a mocking motion of the head, and in a childish, stammering, taunting tone."
But Isaiah turns upon them with their own words: "You call me, Stammerer! I tell you that God, Who speaks through me, and Whom in me you mock, will one day speak again to you in a tongue that shall indeed sound stammering to you. When those far-off barbarians have reached your walls, and over them taunt you in uncouth tones, then shall you hear how God can stammer. For these shall be the very voice of Him, and as He threatens you with captivity it shall be your bitterness to remember how by me He once offered you a rest and refreshing, which you refused. I tell you more. God will not only speak in words, but in deeds, and then truly your nickname for His message shall be fulfilled to you. Then shall the word of the Lord be unto you precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little. For God shall speak with the terrible simplicity and slowness of deeds, with the gradual growth of fate, with the monotonous stages of decay, till step by step you go, and stumble backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. You have scorned my instruction as monosyllables fit for children! By irritating monosyllables of gradual penalty shall God instruct you the second time."
This is not only a very clever and cynical retort, but the statement of a moral principle. We gather from Isaiah that God speaks twice to men, first in words and then by deeds, but both times very simply and plainly. And if men deride and abuse the simplicity of the former, if they ignore moral and religious truths because they are elementary, and rebel against the quiet reiteration of simple voices, with which God sees it most healthy to conduct their education, then they shall be stunned by the commonplace pertinacity, with which the effects of their insolence work themselves out in life. Gods ways with men are mostly commonplace; that is the hardest lesson we have to learn. The tongue of conscience speaks like the tongue of time, prevailingly by ticks and moments; not in undue excitement of soul and body, not in the stirring up of out: passions nor by enlisting our ambitions, not in thunder nor in startling visions, but by everyday precepts of faithfulness, honour, and purity, to which conscience has to rise unwinged by fancy or ambition, and dreadfully weighted with the dreariness of life. If we, carried away upon the rushing interests of the world, and with our appetite spoiled by the wealth and piquancy of intellectual knowledge, despise the simple monitions of conscience and Scripture, as uninteresting and childish, this is the risk we run, -that God will speak to us in another, and this time unshirkable, kind of commonplace. What that is we shall understand, when a career of dissipation or unscrupulous ambition has bereft life of all interest and joy, when one enthusiasm after another grows dull, and one pleasure after another tasteless, when all the little things of life preach to us of judgment, and "the grasshopper becometh a burden," and we, slowly descending through the drab and monotony of decay, suffer the last great commonplace, death. There can be no greater irony than for the soul, which has sinned by too greedily seeking for sensation, to find sensation absent even from the judgments she has brought upon herself. Poor Heines "Confessions" acknowledge, at once with the appreciation of an artist and the pain of a victim, the satire, with which the Almighty inflicts, in the way that Isaiah describes, His penalties upon sins of sense.
III. COVENANTS WITH DEATH AND HELL
(Isa_28:14-22)
To Isaiahs threats of destruction, the politicians of Jerusalem replied, We have bought destruction off! They meant some treaty with a foreign power. Diplomacy is always obscure, and at that distance its details are buried for us in impenetrable darkness. But we may safely conclude that it was either the treaty of Ahaz with Assyria, or some counter-treaty executed with Egypt since this power began again to rise into pretentiousness, or more probably still it was a secret agreement with the southern power, while the open treaty with the northern was yet in force. Isaiah, from the way in which he speaks, seems to have been in ignorance of all, except that the politicians boast was an unhallowed, underhand intrigue, accomplished by much swindling and false conceit of cleverness. This wretched subterfuge Isaiah exposes in some of the most powerful sentences he ever uttered. A faithless diplomacy was never more thoroughly laid bare, in its miserable mixture of political pedantry and falsehood.
"Therefore hear the word of Jehovah, ye men of scorn, rulers of this people, which is in Jerusalem!"
"Because ye have said, We have entered into a covenant with Death, and with Hell have we made a bargain; the Overflowing Scourge," a current phrase of Isaiahs which they fling back in his teeth, "when it passeth along, shall not come unto us, for we have set lies as our refuge, and in falsehood have we hidden ourselves" [the prophets penetrating scorn drags up into their boast the secret conscience of their hearts, that after all lies did form the basis of this political arrangement], "therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I lay in Zion for foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste." No need of swift couriers to Egypt, and fret and fever of poor political brains in Jerusalem! The word make haste is onomatopoetic, like our fuss, and, if fuss may be applied to the conduct of high affairs of state, its exact equivalent in meaning.
"And I will set justice for a line, and righteousness for a plummet, and hail shall sweep away the subterfuge of lies, and the secrecy shall waters overflow. And cancelled shall be your covenant with Death, and your bargain with Hell shall not stand."
"The Overflowing Scourge," indeed! "When it passeth over, then ye shall be unto it for trampling. As often as it passeth over, it shall take you away, for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night. Then shall it be sheer terror to realise the Message!" Too late then for anything else. Had you realised "the Message" now, what rest and refreshing! But then only terror.
"For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself upon it, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it." This proverb seems to be struck out of the prophet by the belief of the politicians, that they are creating a stable and restful policy for Judah. It flashes an aspect of hopeless uneasiness over the whole political situation. However they make their bed, with Egypts or Assyrias help, they shall not find it comfortable. No cleverness of theirs can create a satisfactory condition of affairs, no political arrangement, nothing short of faith, of absolute reliance on that bare foundation-stone laid in Zion, -Gods assurance that Jerusalem is inviolable.
"For Jehovah shall arise as on Mount Peratsim; He shall be stirred as in the valley of Gibeon, to do His deed-strange is this deed of His, and to bring to pass His act-strange is His act."
"Now, therefore, play no more the scorner, lest your bands be made tight, for a consumption, and that determined have I heard from the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, upon the whole earth." This finishes the matter. Possibility of alliance there is for sane men nowhere in this world of Western Asia, so evidently near convulsion. Only the foundation-stone in Zion shall be left. Cling to that.
When the pedantic members of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, in the year 1650, were clinging with all the grip of their hard logic, but with very little heart, to the "Divine right of kings," and attempting an impossible state, whose statute-book was to be the Westminster Confession, and its chief executive officer King Charles II, Cromwell, then encamped at Musselburgh, sent them that letter in which the famous sentence occurs:
"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. Precept may be upon precept, line may be upon line," he goes on to say, "and yet the Word of the Lord may be to some a word of Judgment; that they may fall backward, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken! There may be a spiritual fulness, which the world may call drunkenness; as in the second chapter of the Acts. There may be, as well, a carnal confidence upon misunderstood and misapplied precepts, which may be called spiritual drunkenness. There may be a Covenant made with Death and Hell! I will not say yours was so. But judge if such things have a politic aim: To avoid the overflowing scourge; or, To accomplish worldly interests? And if therein you have confederated with wicked and carnal men, and have respect for them, or otherwise have drawn them in to associate with us, Whether this be a covenant of God and spiritual? Bethink yourselves; we hope we do.
I pray you read the Twenty-eighth of Isaiah, from the fifth to the fifteenth verse. And do not scorn to know that it is the Spirit that quickens and giveth life."
Cromwell, as we have said, is the best commentator Isaiah has ever had, and that by an instinct born, not only of the same faith, but of experience in tackling similar sorts of character. In this letter he is dealing, like Isaiah, with stubborn pedants, who are endeavouring to fasten the national fortunes upon a Procrustean policy. The diplomacy of Jerusalem was very clever; the Covenanting ecclesiasticism of Edinburgh was logical and consistent. But a Jewish alliance with Assyria and the attempt of Scotsmen to force their covenant upon the whole United Kingdom were equally sheer impossibilities. In either case "the bed was shorter than that a man could stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than that he could wrap himself in it." Both, too, were "covenants with Death and Hell"; for if the attempt of the Scots to secure Charles II by the covenant was free from the falsehood of Jewish diplomacy, it was fatally certain, if successful, to have led to the subversion of their highest religious interests; and history has proved that Cromwell was no more than just in applying to it the strong expressions, which Isaiah uses Of Judahs ominous treaties with the unscrupulous heathen. Over against so pedantic an idea as that of forcing the life of the three nations into the mould of the one Covenant, and so fatal a folly as the attempt to commit the interests of religion to the keeping of the dissolute and perjured king, Cromwell stands in his great toleration of everything but unrighteousness and his strong conviction of three truths: - that the religious life of Great Britain and Ireland was too rich andvaried for the Covenant: that national and religious interests so complicated and precious could be decided only upon the plainest principles of faith and justice: and that, tested by these principles, Charles and his crew were as utterly without worth to the nation and as pregnant with destruction, as Isaiah felt Assyria and Egypt to be to Judah. The battle-cries of the two parties at Dunbar are significant of the spiritual difference between them. That of the Scots was "The Covenant!" Cromwells was Isaiahs own, "The Lord of Hosts!" However logical, religious, and sincere theirs might be, it was at the best a scheme of men too narrow for events, and fatally compromised by its association with Charles II. But Cromwells battle-cry required only a moderately sincere faith from those who adopted it to ensure their victory. For to them it meant just what it had meant to Isaiah, loyalty to a Divine providence, supreme in righteousness, the willingness to be guided by events, interpreting them by no tradition or scheme, but only by conscience. He who understands this will be able to see which side was right in that strange civil war, where both so sincerely claimed to be Scriptural.
It may be wondered why we spend so much argument on comparing the attempt to force Charles II into the Solemn League and Covenant with the impious treaty of Judah with the heathen. But the argument has not been wasted, if it have shown how even sincere and religious men may make covenants with death, and even Church creeds and constitutions become beds too short that a man may lie upon them, coverings narrower than that he can wrap himself in them. Not once or twice has it happened that an old and hallowed constitution has become, in the providence of God, unfit for the larger life of a people or of a Church, and yet is clung to by parties in that Church or people from motives of theological pedantry or ecclesiastical cowardice. Sooner or later a crisis is sure to arrive, in which the defective creed has to match itself against some interest of justice; and then endless compromises have to be entertained, that discover themselves perilously like "bargains with hell." If we of this generation have to make a public application of the twenty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, it lies in this direction. There are few things, to which his famous proverb of the short bed can be applied more aptly, than to the attempt to fasten down the religious life and thought of the present age too rigorously upon a creed of the fashion of two or three hundred years ago.
But Isaiahs words have wider application. Short of faith as he exemplified it, there is no possibility for the spirit of man to be free from uneasiness. It is so all along the scale of human endeavour. No power of patience or of hope is his, who cannot imagine possibilities of truth outside his own opinions, nor trust a justice larger than his private rights. It is here very often that the real test of our faith meets us. If we seek to fit life solely to the conception of our privileges, if in the preaching of our opinions no mystery of higher truth awe us at least into reverence and caution; then, whatever religious creeds we profess, we are not men of faith, but shall surely inherit the bitterness and turmoil that are the portion of unbelievers. If we make it the chief aim of our politics to drive cheap bargains for our trade or to be consistent to party or class interests; if we trim our conscience to popular opinion: if we sell our honesty in business or our love in marriage, that we may be comfortable in the world; then, however firmly we be established in reputation or in welfare, we have given our spiritual nature a support utterly inadequate to its needs, and we shall never find rest. Sooner or later, a man must feel the pinch of having cut his life short of the demands of conscience. Only a generous loyalty to her decrees will leave him freedom of heart and room for his arm to swing. Nor will any philosophy, however comprehensive, nor poetic fancy, however elastic, be able without the complement of faith to arrange, to account for, or to console us for, the actual facts of experience. It is only belief in the God of Isaiah, a true and loving God, omnipotent Ruler of our life, that can bring us peace. There was never a sorrow that did not find explanation in that, never a tired thought that would not cling to it. There are no interests so scattered nor energies so far-reaching that there is not return and rest for them under the shadow of His wings. "He that believeth shall not make haste." "Be still," says a psalm of the same date as Isaiah-"Be still, and know that I am God."
IV. THE ALMIGHTY: THE ALL-METHODICAL
(Isa_28:23-29)
The patience of faith, which Isaiah has so nobly preached, he now proceeds to vindicate by reason. But the vindication implies that his audience are already in another mood. From confidence in their clever diplomacy, heedless of the fact that God has His own purposes concerning them, they have swung round to despair before His judgments. Their despair, however, is due to the same fault as their careless confidence-the forgetfulness that God works by counsel and method. Even a calamity, so universal and extreme as that of whose certainty the prophet has now convinced them, has its measure and its term. To persuade the crushed and superstitious Jews of this, Isaiah employs a parable. "You know," he says, "the husbandman. Have you ever seen him keep on harrowing and breaking the clods of his land for mere sport, and without farther intention? Does not the harrowing time lead to the sowing time? Or again, when he threshes his crops, does he thresh for ever? Is threshing the end he has in view? Look, how he varies the rigour of his instrument by the kind of plant he threshes. For delicate plants, like fitches and cummin, he does not use the threshing sledge with the sharp teeth, or the lumbering roller, but the fitches are beaten out with a staff and the cummin with a rod. And in the case of bread corn, which needs his roller and horses, he does not use these upon it till it is all crushed to dust." The application of this parable is very evident. If the husbandman be so methodical and careful, shall the God who taught him not also be so? If the violent treatment of land and fruits be so measured and adapted for their greater fruitfulness and purity, ought we not to trust God to have the same intentions in His violent treatment of His people? Isaiah here returns to his fundamental gospel: that the Almighty is the All-methodical, too. Men forget this. In their times of activity they think God indifferent; they are too occupied with their own schemes for shaping life, to imagine that He has any. In days of suffering, again, when disaster bursts, they conceive of God only as force and vengeance. Yet, says Isaiah, "Jehovah of hosts is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in that sort of wisdom which causes things to succeed." This last word of the chapter is very expressive. It literally means furtherance, help, salvation, and then the true wisdom or insight which ensures these: the wisdom which carries things through. It splendidly sums up Isaiahs gospel to the Jews, cowering like dogs before the coming calamity: God is not mere force or vengeance. His judgments are not chaos. But "He is wonderful in counsel," and all His ways have "furtherance" or "salvation" for their end.
We have said this is one of the finest prophecies of Isaiah. His political foresight was admirable, when he alone of his countrymen predicted the visitation of Assyria upon Judah. But now, when all are convinced of it, how still more wonderful does he seem facing that novel disaster, with the whole worlds force behind it, and declaring its limit. He has not the temptation, so strong in prophets of judgment, to be a mere disaster-monger, and leave judgment on the horizon unrelieved. Nor is he afraid, as other predicters of evil have been, of the monster he has summoned to the land. The secret of this is that from the first he predicted the Assyrian invasion, not out of any private malice nor merely by superior political foresight, but because he knew-and knew, as he tells us, by the inspiration of Gods own Spirit-that God required such an instrument to punish the unrighteousness of Judah. If the enemy was summoned by God at the first, surely till the last the enemy shall be in Gods hand.
To this enemy we are now to see Isaiah turn with the same message he has delivered to the men of Jerusalem.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 5 Isa_28:1-4. Woe to the crown of pride, to the…
ENGLAND’S CRYING SIN
Isa_28:1-4. Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, &c., [1102]
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[1102] See pages 116 and 127.
Ephraim one of the most important of the tribes. It occupied some of the richest land, about the middle of Palestine. When the ten tribes formed a separate kingdom, Ephraim was the principal tribe in it. Hence the new kingdom was sometimes called Ephraim. Its capital Samaria, here called “the crown of pride.” It was a position of great natural strength. Its situation exceedingly beautiful. The sides of the hill on which it was built sloped down to rich valleys, covered with beautiful flowers and fruit-bearing trees. “Glorious beauty.” “Fat valleys.” No wonder the people were proud of it. When this prophecy was written, it was at the height of its pride. But it was doomed. The glorious beauty was a fading flower. The crown of pride was to be trodden under feet. Samaria was a delicious morsel for the invader, plucked and eaten as soon as seen. Shalmanezer, with the Assyrian host, invaded, overcame, carried the people away, never to return. Unlike Judah in this respect. An unsolved problem to this day, where are the ten tribes? do they still exist, or are they entirely extinct?
It was because of sin. The story of Samaria’s idolatry. To tamper with idolatry was to renounce allegiance to Jehovah. But that was not all. Serious moral obliquities came in the wake of idolatry. Among these was intemperance. Had become a crying sin. Was helping to drag the nation down to ruin. “Woe to the crown of pride,” &c.
Here is a warning to England. England’s crying sin is Samaria’s crying sin. God forbid that England should persist in it, so as to bring on herself Samaria’s doom! Mark—
I. ITS SINFULNESS. It was treated as sin in the case of Samaria. It is still a sin, as well as a vice and a crime. Keep to the text in pointing out its sinfulness. Drunkards described as “them that are overcome with wine.” Not a trifling thing to be overcome. The drunkard allows a thing he loves to overcome him and rob him of that for the safe keeping of which he is responsible to God. He is under obligation to keep himself for God, and he betrays his trust. What is overcome?
1. Reason. A great trust. Bound to use it to the best of our ability; therefore to keep it in efficient working order so far as it lies in our power. If you lent a man a tool, or a machine, you would require him to keep it from injury. But strong drink contends with and overcomes reason. You attach no importance to opinions expressed or reasonings attempted by a drunken man. His reason has been overcome by his own consent. He could not have been overcome if he had refused to play with the enemy.
2. Conscience. Is not conscience a sacred trust? Sentry at the door of character. Shall the sentry be drugged when the enemy is near? Does not intemperance stupefy the conscience? Many a man who once would have dreaded a sin more than a blow has become regardless of sin, regardless of God. Not only does intoxication deaden the sense of its own criminality; it lowers the moral tone as to everything else. The moral nature becomes enfeebled. Any other temptation more likely to succeed. By little and little comes over the soul a tendency to make light of every kind of sin. Communion with God is broken off. Prayer is a dull and comfortless exercise when the excitement of intemperance has become attractive. The religious nature becomes dead or maudlin under the influence of drunkenness. Alas! that men should undermine and disable their noblest faculty! (H. E. I., 4498).
3. Physical strength. Are not our bodies also entrusted to us to keep safely for the uses the Maker intends? If the suicide who takes his own life by a single stroke rushes into the presence of his judge uncalled, must not the man who by negligence, folly, or vice, shortens his life, answer for it in the same way? But the drunkard does this by being overcome with wine.
II. ITS PENALTY. There was a worm at the root of the glorious beauty, and fruitfulness, and pride of Ephraim; and therefore it was a fading flower. The worm was their sinfulness. The drunkard may say that he is prosperous to-day; but the worm is at the root.
1. Look at the consequences to himself. The deteriorated character, lowered tastes, lowered company of many a well-educated and splendid young man, and many a beautiful promising boy. The social degradation. “Trodden down.” Avoided and despised by former associates. The ruined circumstances. Gradually downwards, and finally at the depth of poverty. The Lost Eternity. “No inheritance.”
2. Look at the consequences to his family. Wife unhappy. Children uneducated and untrained. Home impoverished and desolate. There is a skeleton in that house.
3. Look at the consequences to society. Drunkards usually seek society. Their example influences others.
How to cure? How to prevent?
1. Legislation. Can the legislature do nothing more than it has done? What of Sunday closing? What of music saloons? What of limitation of the hours? What of diminishing the number of houses? What of abolition of the traffic?
2. Abstinence. Urge it on drunkards as their only chance of recovery. On the young as their best security. On Christians as the most effective protest and influential example.
3. Religion. Realise the sinfulness of intemperance. Let the grace of God reign over thoughts, appetites, habits.—J. Rawlinson.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 I. The Christian thrives better from not being permitted…
Isa 28:16
I. The Christian thrives better from not being permitted to make haste in acquirements. This passage is directed against anything like hurry or bustle. It does not so much declare that the believer can never advance rapidly as that he shall never move with that agitated step which betokens insecurity. It does not denote a sluggish pace to be unavoidable; but simply implies that what is hasty and sudden will not be allowed. And a little reflection will convince us of the advantages of such an arrangement. It holds good in almost everything, that what is done hastily is seldom done well. There is a great deal of rough work in all matters of learning, which the scholar would gladly avoid; but there will be nothing substantial in it unless this natural inclination be carefully opposed. The case is just the same in regard to religion; there is a great deal of rough work here as well as in languages or sciences. It is for the believer’s advantage that he is not allowed to slur over this rough work. Take the experience of Christians, and you will find that where progress has been most rapid, the commencement has been most arduous. If the Christian have once been greatly humbled, emptied of self, and alarmed at the view of God’s wrath against sin, he will never afterwards lose the feelings thus excited within him. They will accompany him; not to agitate him, but to admonish him; not to terrify, but to alarm.
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II. Consider certain of the comforts and enjoyments which are ensured to the believer by the promise that he shall not make haste. (1) He has a protector always at hand, so that in seasons of emergency he need not run to and fro in search of succour. He has nothing to hasten from, for he is shielded against every assault. He has nothing to hasten to, for he is already enclosed within a rampart of security. (2) We speak of the advantages which result from what is called presence of mind. If the Christian but live up to the privileges which this promise includes, he will never know what it is to be scared by unexpected things, or hurried into injudicious. He can never be called upon for instant decision, so. as to have no time for asking counsel of God. (3) Meekness and patience are included in the announcement of our text. It promises the believer that he shall be collected in the midst of danger, confident in the face of difficulties, hopeful in trial, happy in affliction, steadfast in death. "He that believeth shall not make haste."
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2061.
Our day is one in which men, emphatically, "make haste." Hurry, bustle, drive, meet us at every turn. Of this state of things every one complains, but no one seems able to extricate himself from it. We are drawn into a vortex; it is useless to struggle; all we can do is to yield.
In the passage to which the text belongs, a contrast seems to be drawn between those persons who construct some refuge of their own to protect them from the ills of life, and those others who are willing to avail themselves of that well-built and well-founded House which the Lord God hath provided for them; and then the dismay and disappointment of the one party, when their expectations are found to deceive them, are contrasted with the calm security and confidence of the other. The idea of the text is, that if a man believes in God, and trusts in God, and will consent to work on the lines which God has laid down, he will be saved from that restless, worldly agitation of mind which produces so frequently such calamitous results.
I. Notice how, in temporal matters, this desirable state of things will be brought about. Let a man believe thoroughly in God as one who rewards faithful labour, although He may not see fit to reward it at once, and that man will be kept from the perils into which a restless and unsettled agitation of mind would probably betray him. He can afford to be strong and patient, for he knows that the reward will come.
II. Turn from temporal to spiritual matters. (1) The man who "believeth" has not to run helplessly hither and thither, when a strain comes upon him, seeking for principles to sustain him in the hour of trial. He has got his principles, and they are ready for use. Restless agitation is not his, for his soul is centred and held in equipoise. (2) The man who believes in a living God will not be full of nervous apprehensions about the future of Christianity. Men may break themselves in pieces against the Rock of Ages, but the Rock itself will never move. "He that believeth shall not make haste."
G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to My Friends, p. 136.
References: Isa 28:16.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xi., p. 277; J. G. Murphy, Book of Daniel, p. 62; H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2061; S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 38.
Isa 28:17
All men know themselves to be sinners against God. They know, also, that as sinners they are in peril and are not safe. Hence their anxiety to find some refuge for safety. They know they might find this in the way of forsaking sin and turning to the Lord; but they do not choose to forsake their sins. Hence there seems to be no convenient resource but to hide themselves under some refuge. Our text speaks of the "refuge of lies." Notice some of these refuges.
I. An unsanctifying hope of heaven. A good hope purifies the heart. But there certainly are hopes indulged that fail to purify the heart of those who hold them. Those hopes are worthless—a mere refuge of lies.
II. An old experience, that is all old, is a lie.
III. There are two forms of self-righteousness—the legal and the Gospel—both of which are refuges of lies. The legal depends on duty-doing, evermore trying to work out salvation by deeds of law. The Gospel form sets itself to get grace by works. Men try to get a new heart, not by trying to turn from all sin, but by praying for it.
IV. Universalism is an old refuge of lies. It never saved any man from sin. It throws no influence in that direction.
V. God declares that "the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies." No doubt the hail is the symbol of God’s displeasure. He loves truth too well to have the least sympathy with lies. He loves the souls of men too well to have any patience with agencies so destructive. Therefore, He loathes all these refuges of lies, and has solemnly declared that the hail shall sweep them all away.
VI. There is a refuge which is not one of lies. There is a hiding-place which no waters can reach to overwhelm. It lies far above their course. You need to come into such communion with Christ, that His power and presence and fulness shall flow through your heart fully and freely, and be in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
C. G. Finney, Sermons on Gospel Themes, p. 119.
References: Isa 28:17.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1501. Isa 28:20.—W. H. Langhorne, Penny Pulpit, No. 1030; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 244; Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 67. Isa 28:23-29.—S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. i., p. 88. Isa 28:24-29.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xi., p. 142. Isa 28:25.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1626. Isa 28:29.—Ibid., vol. xii., No. 711.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 6 Isa 28:1 - Isa 28:13.
Isaiah
THE JUDGMENT OF DRUNKARDS AND MOCKERS
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Isa 28:1 - Isa 28:13.
This prophecy probably falls in the first years of Hezekiah, when Samaria still stood, and the storm of war was gathering black in the north. The portion included in the text predicts the fall of Samaria {Isa 28:1 - Isa 28:6} and then turns to Judah, which is guilty of the same sins as the northern capital, and adds to them mockery of the prophet’s message. Isaiah speaks with fiery indignation and sharp sarcasm. His words are aflame with loathing of the moral corruption of both kingdoms, and he fastens on the one common vice of drunkenness-not as if it were the only sin, but because it shows in the grossest form the rottenness underlying the apparent beauty.
I. The woe on Samaria {Isa 28:1 - Isa 28:6}. Travellers are unanimous in their raptures over the fertility and beauty of the valley in which Samaria stood, perched on its sunny, fruitful hill, amid its vineyards. The situation of the city naturally suggests the figure which regards it as a sparkling coronet or flowery wreath, twined round the brows of the hill; and that poetical metaphor is the more natural, since revellers were wont to twist garlands in their hair, when they reclined at their orgies. The city is ‘the crown of pride’-that is, the object of boasting and foolish confidence-and is also ‘the fading flower of his sparkling ornament’; that is, the flower which is the ornament of Ephraim, but is destined to fade.
The picture of the city passes into that of the drunken debauch, where the chief men of Samaria sprawl, ‘smitten down’ by wine, and with the innocent flowers on their hot temples drooping in the fumes of the feast. But bright and sunny as the valley is, glittering in the light as the city sits on her hill, careless and confident as the revellers are, a black cloud lies on the horizon, and one of the terrible sudden storms which such lands know comes driving up the valley. ‘The Lord hath a mighty and strong one’-the conqueror from the north, who is God’s instrument, though he knows it not.
The swift, sudden, irresistible onslaught of the Assyrian is described, in harmony with the figure of the flowery coronal, as a tempest which beats down the flowers and flings the sodden crown to the ground. The word rendered ‘tempest’ is graphic, meaning literally a ‘downpour.’ First comes hail, which batters the flowers to shreds; then the effect of the storm is described as ‘destruction,’ and then the hurrying words turn back to paint the downpour of rain, ‘mighty’ from its force in falling, and ‘overflowing’ from its abundance, which soon sets all the fields swimming with flood water. What chance has a poor twist of flowers in such a storm? Its beauty will be marred, and all the petals beaten off, and nothing remains but that it should be trampled into mud. The rush of the prophet’s denunciation is swift and irresistible as the assault it describes, and it flashes from one metaphor to another without pause. The fertility of the valley of Samaria shapes the figures. As the picture of the flowery chaplet, so that which follows of the early fig, is full of local colour. A fig in June is a delicacy, which is sure to be plucked and eaten as soon as seen. Such a dainty, desirable morsel will Samaria be, as sweet and as little satisfying to the all-devouring hunger of the Assyrian.
But storms sweep the air clear, and everything will not go down before this one. The flower fadeth, but there is a chaplet of beauty which men may wreathe round their heads, which shall bloom for ever. All sensuous enjoyment has its limits in time, as well as in nobleness and exquisiteness; but when it is all done with, the beauty and festal ornament which truly crowns humanity shall smell sweet and blossom. The prophecy had regard simply to the issue of the historical disaster to which it pointed, and it meant that, after the storm of Assyrian conquest, there would still be, for the servants of God, the residue of the people, both in Israel and in Judah, a fuller possession of the blessings which descend on the men who make God their portion. But the principle involved is for ever true. The sweeping away of the perishable does draw true hearts nearer to God.
So the two halves of this prophecy give us eternal truths as to the certain destruction awaiting the joys of sense, and the permanence of the beauty and strength which belong to those who take God for their portion.
Drunkenness seems to have been a national sin in Israel; for Micah rebukes it as vehemently as Isaiah, and it is a clear bit of Christian duty in England to-day to ‘set the trumpet to thy mouth and show the people’ this sin. But the lessons of the prophecy are wider than the specific form of evil denounced. All setting of affection and seeking of satisfaction in that which, in all the pride of its beauty, is ‘a fading flower,’ is madness and sin. Into every life thus turned to the perishable will come the crash of the destroying storm, the mutterings of which might reach the ears of the feasters, if they were not drunk with the fumes of their deceiving delights. Only one kind of life has its roots in that which abides, and is safe from tempest and change. Amaranthine flowers bloom only in heaven, and must be brought thence, if they are to garland earthly foreheads. If we take God for ours, then whatever tempests may howl, and whatever fragile though fragrant joys may be swept away, we shall find in Him all that the world ‘fails to give to its votaries. He is ‘a crown of glory’ and ‘a diadem of beauty.’ Our humanity is never so fair as when it is made beautiful by the possession of Him. All that sense vainly seeks in earth, faith finds in God. Not only beauty, but ‘a spirit of judgment,’ in its narrower sense and in its widest, is breathed into those to whom God is ‘the master light of all their seeing’; and, yet more, He is strength to all who have to fight. Thus the close union of trustful souls with God, the actual inspiration of these, and the perfecting of their nature from communion with God, are taught us in the great words, which tell how beauty, justice, and strength are all given in the gift of Jehovah Himself to His people.
II. The prophet turns to Judah {Isa 28:7 - Isa 28:13}, and charges them with the same disgusting debauchery. His language is vehement in its loathing, and describes the filthy orgies of those who should have been the guides of the people with almost painful realism. Note how the words ‘reel’ and ‘stagger’ are repeated, and also the words ‘wine’ and ‘strong drink.’ We see the priests’ and prophets’ unsteady gait, and then they ‘stumble’ or fall. There they lie amid the filth, like hogs in a sty. It is very coarse language, but fine words are the Devil’s veils for coarse sins; and it is needful sometimes to call spades spades, and not to be ashamed to tell men plainly how ugly are the vices which they are not ashamed to commit. No doubt some of the drunken priests and false prophets in Jerusalem thought Isaiah extremely vulgar and indelicate, in talking about staggering teachers and tables swimming in ‘vomit.’ But he had to speak out. So deep was the corruption that the officials were tipsy even when engaged in their official duties, the prophets reeled while they were seeing visions; the judges could not sit upright even when pronouncing judgment.
Isa 28:9 - Isa 28:10 are generally taken as a sarcastic quotation of the drunkards’ scoffs at the prophet. They might be put in inverted commas. Their meaning is, ‘Does he take us grave and reverend seigniors, priests and prophets, to be babies just weaned, that he pesters us with these monotonous petty preachings, fit only for the nursery, which he calls his “message"?’ In Isa 28:10, the original for ‘precept upon precept,’ etc., is a series of short words, which may be taken as reproducing the ‘babbling tones of the drunken mockers.’
The loose livers of all generations talk in the same fashion about the stern morality which rebukes their vice. They call it weak, commonplace, fit for children, and they pretend that they despise it. They are much too enlightened for such antiquated teaching. Old women and children may take it in, but men of the world, who have seen life, and know what is what, are not to be fooled so. ‘What will this babbler say?’ was asked by the wise men of Athens, who were but repeating the scoffs of the prophets and priests of Jerusalem, and the same jeers are bitter in the mouth of many a profligate man to-day. It is the fate of all strict morality to be accounted childish by the people whom it inconveniently condemns.
In Isa 28:11 and onwards the prophet speaks. He catches up the mockers’ words, and retorts them. They have scoffed at his message as if it were stammering speech. They shall hear another kind of stammerers when the fierce invaders’ harsh and unintelligible language commands them. The reason why these foreign voices would have authority, was the national disregard of God’s voice. ‘Ye would not hear’ Him when, by His prophet, He spoke gracious invitations to rest, and to give the nation rest, in obedience and trust. Therefore they shall hear the battle-cry of the conqueror, and have to obey orders spoken in a barbarous tongue.
Of course, the language meant is the Assyrian, which, though cognate with Hebrew, is so unlike as to be unintelligible to the people. But is not the threat the statement of a great truth always being fulfilled towards the disobedient? If we will not listen to that loving Voice which calls us to rest, we shall be forced to listen to the harsh and strident tones of conquering enemies who command us to slavish toil. If we will not be guided by His eye and voice, we shall be governed by whip and bridle. Our choice is either to hearken to the divine call, which is loving and gentle, and invites to deep repose springing from faith, or to have to hear the voice of the taskmasters. The monotony of despised moral and religious teaching shall give place to a more terrible monotony, even that of continuous judgments.
‘The mills of God grind slowly.’ Bit by bit, with gradual steps, with dismal persistence, like the slow drops on the rock, the judgments of God trickle out on the mocking heart. It takes a long time for a child to learn a pageful when he gets his lesson a sentence at a time. So slowly do His chastisements fall on men who have despised the continuous messages of His love. The word of the Lord, which was laughed at when it clothed itself in a prophet’s speech, will be heard in more formidable shape, when it is wrapped in the long-drawn-out miseries of years of bondage. The warning is as needful for us as for these drunken priests and scornful rulers. The principle embodied is true in this day as it was then, and we too have to choose between serving God in gladness, hearkening to the voice of His word, and so finding rest to our souls, and serving the world, the flesh, and the devil, and so experiencing the perpetual dropping of the fiery rain of His judgments.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Warnings to Judah
Warnings to Judah
These chapters refer to the state of affairs during the reign of Hezekiah, when Palestine was threatened by Assyria, and an influential party in Judah favoured resistance, relying on the support of Egypt; a line of policy consistently opposed by Isaiah.
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This chapter must be assigned (Isa_28:1) to a date prior to the capture of Samaria by the Assyrians (722 b.c.) and fall of the northern kingdom.
1-6. Samaria's luxury and self-indulgence pave the way to ruin.
7-10. Judah likewise is given up to indulgence and heeds not the prophet's warning,
11-13. Therefore Jehovah will teach the people by means of foreign invasion and disaster.
14-22. Judah's safety lies not in faithless diplomacy, but in trust in Jehovah.
23-29. A parable of Jehovah's way of working, drawn from the action of the husbandman, who conducts his operations in accordance with a wise plan.
1. RV 'Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty which is on the head,' etc. The city of Samaria crowning its fair valley is destined to fade and pass away like the flower-garlands of her revellers.
2. A mighty.. one] viz. the Assyrian, Jehovah's agent.
4. Hasty fruit] RV 'first-ripe fig': a delicacy eagerly devoured.
5. In place of the false glory destined to perish, Jehovah is to be a true glory for the faithful remnant.
6. True administration of justice within, and strength to repel the invader. Turn, etc.] RV 'turn back the battle at the gate.'
7. They also] the men of Judah. They err in vision, etc.] They are drunk when engaged in the sacred duties of their office; the tables they have just left prove it (Isa_28:8).
9. They mock the prophet; his teaching is only fit for babes!
10. The people's mockery continued. Must be] RV 'is.' Precept.. line] The words in Heb. are monosyllables, such as would be used in teaching little children.
11. Isaiah's retort, Jehovah will teach them through a foreign invader. RV 'Nay, but by men of strange lips and with another tongue,' etc.
12. This is the rest, etc.] cp. Isa_30:15. Jehovah through His prophet had pointed out the way of peace and recovery for the nation that already under Ahaz had suffered much through foreign alliance. But the politicians of Judah were without patient trust in Jehovah, and were preparing further trouble by seeking alliance with Egypt.
13. RV 'Therefore shall the word of the Lord be unto them,' etc. The teaching they refused will prove a burden and a stumbling block.
15. Made a covenant] they thought that by their policy they had, as it were, bought off death and Hades—made themselves secure.
Lies, etc.] Though the words are put into the mouth of the politicians, the point of view is the prophet's.
16. Zion] as being Jehovah's foundation, shall stand firm. The imagery was suggested by the large stones of the Temple. Shall not make haste] i.e. hasten hither and thither to seek security by alliances (e.g. with Egypt), but may wait confidently on Jehovah. The Apostles saw the ultimate spiritual fulfilment of Isaiah's words in the person of Christ (Eph_2:20; 1Pe_2:6-7).
17. RV 'Judgment also will I make the line and righteousness the plummet.' Righteousness is the standard by which Jehovah will try conduct. The sense of what follows is that the false refuges and alliances (Isa_28:18), by which men seek to secure themselves, will be swept away.
19. From.. forth] RV 'As often as it passeth through.' A vexation, etc.] RV 'nought but terror to understand the message,' which they before rejected (Isa_28:12-13); it is now nothing but terrifying rumours.
20. Depicts in an expressive figure the failure ending in restless discomfort and distress, towards which the policy of the dominant party is tending.
21. Perazim.. Gibeon] referring to David's victories over the Philistines (2Sa_5:20; 1Ch_14:16). Then God interposed on behalf of His people, His strange work is His work of judgment against them.
22. Their scornful attitude will only lead to heavier foreign oppression. Lest your bands] They are acting in such a way as to fix the Assyrian yoke more firmly upon Judah, and render it more galling. Consumption] RV 'consummation': see Isa_10:22, Isa_10:23.
24. The implied answer is No; he doth not do these things continually.
25. Fitches] (i.e. fennel-seed) and cummin were the smallest and most delicate seeds. Cast in, etc.] RV 'put in the wheat in rows, and the barley in the appointed place, and the spelt in the border thereof.'
28. 'Is bread corn crushed? Nay, he.. and though the wheel of his cart and his horses scatter it, he doth not grind it.'
29. Working] RV 'wisdom.'
In Isa_28:24-29 the skill of the agriculturalist in varying his operations is treated as a reflexion and parable of the divine wisdom. Delicate grains are threshed but not crushed so heavily as to spoil them (Isa_28:27-28); so Jehovah's judgments are not for destruction, but to prepare men for their great destiny.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 (See Scofield "Isa 7:2")
Ephraim
(See Scofield "Isa 7:2")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 3. The Six Woes of the Prophet, Judgment Ruins…
3. The Six Woes of the Prophet, Judgment Ruins and Restoration Glories to Come (28-35)
CHAPTER 28
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The First Woe and the Message of Assurance
1. Ephraim addressed (Isa 28:1-6) 2. Jerusalem equally corrupt and guilty (Isa 28:7-8) 3. The prophet mocked (Isa 28:9-10) The prophet’s answer (Isa 28:11-13) 4. Their covenant with death (Isa 28:14-15) 5. The message of assurance (Isa 28:16-22) 6. How Jehovah judges (Isa 28:23-29) The first woe is directed against the ten tribes, Ephraim. The judgment is that which fell upon them through the invasion of Sennacherib. Yet glory is also in store for the scattered, so-called, lost tribes. A remnant will return. Isa 28:5 describes this glory.
The prophecy here and in the subsequent chapters was not by any means fulfilled when the Assyrian came into Israel’s land. Its greater fulfillment is in the future, when the Assyrian once more invades Israel’s land. See chapter 10. The covenant with death and agreement with hell (Isa 28:15) must be compared with Dan 9:27. It is the time when the apostate Jewish nation enters into a covenant with the coming prince and worships Antichrist. This verse and the message from the Lord in Isa 28:16-22 are deeply interesting.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
Concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
Chapters 28 to 33 in the Book of Isaiah contain a cycle of prophecies and proclamations concerning the relation of Judah to Assyria in the time of King Hezekiah. Ahaz had sinned in seeking protection against Syria and Israel not in the Lord, but in Assyria, thereby making Assyria a scourge of Judah. Hezekiah, otherwise a pious king, erred in seeking protection against Assyria by appealing to Egypt and entering into an alliance with this heathen nation. All this is described at length in these chapters and the planning and scheming without tile Lord condemned. At the same time, like flashes of sunlight on a dark day, Messianic promises are found in the midst of the gloomy denunciations of the prophet.
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The Lord Rebukes and Comforts
v. 1. Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, that upon which they prided themselves in their contempt of the Lord, whose glorious beauty, like that of a wreath or garland put on during a drunken feast, is a fading flower, which are, rather, which is, for the reference is to the crown or garland worn by the drunken fools of Samaria, on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine. The picture is that of Samaria, the capital of tile Northern Kingdom, situated on a beautiful hill, surrounded with rich, terraced valleys like wreaths, but with its leaders slaves of wine, overcome by the vice of drunkenness. The picture is purposely painted dark, as a warning to the inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom.
v. 2. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, namely, the Assyrian conqueror, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, a shower of destruction, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand, overthrowing boast fill Ephraim with its proud capital, Samaria.
v. 3. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, the wreath which the drunkards of Ephraim, tile rulers of the Northern Kingdom, wear with such arrogant haughtiness, shall be trodden under feet;
v. 4. and the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer, that is, it will happen to the fading flower of Ephraim’s beauty, which is on the head of the fertile valley, as it does to the early fig, which, when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand, just as soon as he has gotten hold of it, he eateth it up. The ruin of Samaria took place in hardly more than four or five years, and there was as yet no intimation of its destruction when the prophet wrote these words. But the reference to the overthrow of the false glory of Samaria leads to the mention of the divine, the Messianic beauty.
v. 5. In that day, with the dawn of the Messianic era, shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people, namely, to the believers of the true Israel, especially in the New Testament, the small number from all nations and peoples who accept the Messiah,
v. 6. and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, to have righteousness and justice prevailing throughout the land, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate, both in repelling an attack of the enemies and in directing the battle against the stronghold of the adversaries. The believers have power both to withstand the evil and to wage an offensive war against those who are its exponents. After this beautiful interlude the Lord turns to the people of Judah with a similar earnest warning.
v. 7. But they also have erred through wine, the rulers of Judah being addicted to tile same vice as those of Samaria, and through strong drink are out of the way, reeling and staggering in their drunkenness; the priest, to whom the use of intoxicating liquors was strictly forbidden, and the prophet have erred through strong drink, Cf Lev 10:9; Eze 44:21, they are swallowed up of wine, altogether overcome by the vice, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, at the very time when they should be under the influence of the Spirit of God alone, they stumble in judgment, their befuddled minds causing them to make wrong applications and interpretations of the Law.
v. 8. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, the result of their beastly drunkenness, so that there is no place clean. The prophet paints the picture of their besottedness before the eyes of these leaders of the people, in order to hold the filth of their vice up before them as in a mirror. He now introduces the drunken adversaries in person, with all their scoffing comment of his warnings.
v. 9. Whom shall he teach knowledge? so they sneeringly ask. And whom shall he make to understand doctrine? presuming to teach them knowledge. Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts. They would have him know that they are no unweaned children, and that they are tired of his schoolmastery ways. They now try to heap ridicule and mockery upon him by stammering about his endless preaching and dinning in their ears.
v. 10. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line, that is, rule upon rule; here a little and there a little, the gist of their attempted reproach being that the prophet was wearying their souls with a mass of little rules and precepts, directions and warnings in wearisome repetition, and without a right plan and order.
v. 11. For with stammering lips and another tongue will He, namely, Jehovah, speak to this people, namely, by a foreign and hostile people, whose language would indeed seem strange and barbarous to them, the Assyrian invaders.
v. 12. To whom He said, or, "He who said to them," This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, for that is what the Lord in His Word offers to weary souls longing for salvation; and this is the refreshing; yet they would not hear, they despised and rejected the Word of the Lord.
v. 13. But the Word of the Lord was unto them, that is, it shall now truly be, precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little, namely, in stammering sounds and a tedious repetition which would come upon them as a judgment from on high, that they might go, unwilling though it may be, and fall backward and be broken and snared and taken, snared and captured by the enemy. Thus many a person, who in our days is sneering at the Word of God as an endless repetition of a jumble of rules and orders of life, will find himself judged and condemned to an eternity of damnation by that very Word; for "he that believeth not shall be damned. "
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 7 Woe to the proud garland ... on the head…
Woe to the proud garland ... on the head of the lush Valley of those who are overcome with wine
A "garland" is a crown made of flowers. Here it represents the city of Samaria, the capital of Israel, which sits above a fertile valley. Samaria and its people being destroyed is spoken of as if the flowers in the garland will grow old and stop being beautiful. (See: Metaphor)
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Behold
"Listen" or "Pay attention"
who are overcome with wine
"who are drunk with wine"
the Lord sends one who is mighty and strong
Here "one" refers to a mighty king who also represents his powerful army. AT: "the Lord sends a king with his powerful army" (See: Synecdoche)
storm of hail
A "storm of hail" or hailstorm happens when hard pieces of ice fall from the sky. Here it is a simile that refers to the enemy army that Yahweh will send to destroy the people of Samaria. (See: Simile)
he will throw each garland crown down to the ground
The king and his powerful army destroying the people of Samaria and their city is spoken of as if the king will throw the people's garlands onto the ground. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
woe
proud
Ephraim
glory
head
wine
lord
might
hand
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 5, 7 28:1–33:24 This section is connected by a series of…
28:1–33:24 This section is connected by a series of six threats of judgment or woes (cp. 5:8-23). Apart from the initial address to Samaria in 28:1-13, the remainder of the section is addressed to Judah, especially because of their inclination to trust Egypt to rescue them from Assyria (30:2).
28:1-29 The glory of Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, is here contrasted with the glory of the Lord. This section represents the first of the six woes (What sorrow . . .).
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28:1 The drunks of Israel epitomized pride, spiritual complacency, and scorn for God and his commands. • Unlike Jerusalem, Samaria was in a fertile valley.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.