He feeds on ashes. A deceived heart has turned him aside; and he can’t deliver his soul, nor say, “Isn’t there a lie in my right hand?”
Parallel Translations
-
He feeds on ashes. A deceived heart has turned him aside; and he can’t deliver his soul, nor say, “Isn’t there a lie in my right hand?”
-
He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?
-
He striveth after ashes, a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say: 'Is there not a lie in my right hand?'
Cross-references (24)
Passages linked to Isaiah 44:20 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Job 15:31 Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself; for emptiness will be his reward.
- Psalms 102:9 For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mixed my drink with tears,
- Hosea 12:1 Ephraim feeds on wind, and chases the east wind. He continually multiplies lies and desolation. They make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried into Egypt.
- Romans 1:28 Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
- Hosea 4:12 My people consult with their wooden idol, and answer to a stick of wood. Indeed the spirit of prostitution has led them astray, and they have been unfaithful to their God.
- Romans 1:25 who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
- 2 Timothy 2:13 If we are faithless, he remains faithful; for he can’t deny himself.”
- 1 Kings 22:20-23 Yahweh said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?’ One said one thing; and another said another. A spirit came out and stood before Yahweh, and said, ‘I will entice him.’ Yahweh said to him, ‘How?’ He said, ‘I will go out and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ He said, ‘You will entice him, and will also prevail. Go out and do so.’ Now therefore, behold, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and Yahweh has spoken evil concerning you.”
- Job 15:2 “Should a wise man answer with vain knowledge, and fill himself with the east wind?
- Proverbs 15:14 The heart of one who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouths of fools feed on folly.
- Isaiah 28:15-17 “Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and we are in agreement with Sheol. When the overflowing scourge passes through, it won’t come to us; for we have made lies our refuge, and we have hidden ourselves under falsehood.’ ” Therefore the Lord Yahweh says, “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation. He who believes shall not act hastily. I will make justice the measuring line, and righteousness the plumb line. The hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow the hiding place.
- Isaiah 59:3-4 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness. No one sues in righteousness, and no one pleads in truth. They trust in vanity, and speak lies. They conceive mischief, and give birth to iniquity.
- Isaiah 59:13 transgressing and denying Yahweh, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
- Jeremiah 16:19 Yahweh, my strength, and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth, and will say, “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, vanity and things in which there is no profit.
- Habakkuk 2:18 “What value does the engraved image have, that its maker has engraved it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he who fashions its form trusts in it, to make mute idols?
- Luke 15:16 He wanted to fill his belly with the husks that the pigs ate, but no one gave him any.
- Romans 1:20-22 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may be without excuse. Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
- 2 Thessalonians 2:9-11 even he whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deception of wickedness for those who are being lost, because they didn’t receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Because of this, God sends them a working of error, that they should believe a lie;
- 1 Timothy 4:2 through the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron,
- 2 Timothy 3:13 But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
- Revelation 12:9 The great dragon was thrown down, the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
- Revelation 13:14 He deceives my own people who dwell on the earth because of the signs he was granted to do in front of the beast, saying to those who dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast who had the sword wound and lived.
- Revelation 18:23 The light of a lamp will shine no more at all in you. The voice of the bridegroom and of the bride will be heard no more at all in you; for your merchants were the princes of the earth; for with your sorcery all the nations were deceived.
- Revelation 20:3 and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were finished. After this, he must be freed for a short time.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (15 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain He is abused as one that would eat ashes,…
He is abused as one that would eat ashes, thinking to satisfy his hunger.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Isa 44:20 He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart…
Isa 44:20 He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, [Is there] not a lie in my right hand?
Ver. 20. He feedeth on ashes,] i.e, He seeketh comfort of his idol, but findeth as little as he doth nourishment who feedeth upon ashes.
Read full note →
A seduced heart hath turned him aside.] And hence it is that he is brought to deify a thing so contemptible. From this expression, note that man is the cause of evil to himself, and is so blinded by his own default that he cannot so much as once think seriously of his soul’s health. His deluded heart, that hath so oft deceived him, may well say to him, as the heart of Apollodorus the tyrant seemed to say to him, who dreamed one night that he was flayed by the Scythians and boiled in a caldron, and that his heart spake to him out of the kettle, ‘Eγω σοι τουτων αιτια, It is I that have drawn thee to all this.
Is there not a lie in my right hand?] i.e., " An idol that is nothing in the world," and nothing it can do for me. How then are images fit to be laymen’s books, being unprofitable, lies, and teachers of lies? {Jer 10:8; Jer 16:19 Hab 2:18}
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 He feedeth on ashes, which is an unsavoury, unprofitable,…
He feedeth on ashes, which is an unsavoury, unprofitable, and pernicious food, and no less unsatisfying, uncomfortable, and mischievous is the worship of idols.
A deceived heart; a mind corrupted and deceived by long custom, deep prejudice, gross error, and especially by his own lusts.
Read full note →
Hath turned him aside from the way of truth, from the knowledge and worship of the true God, unto this brutish idolatry.
Cannot deliver his soul from the snares. and dangers of idolatry. This cannot is to be understood morally, so as to note the great difficulty, but not the utter impossibility of it; for if idolaters would consider things, they might be convinced of and turned from that gross way of wickedness, as is implied from the foregoing verse.
Is there not a lie in my right hand? what is this idol, which I have made with my right hand, i.e. with all my strength? as was said before; the right hand being the strongest and the chief instrument of this and other actions: which I set at my right hand, as the true God is said in Scripture to be at the right hand of his people, Psa 16:8; 109:31; 121:5; which I highly honour; for the most honourable place was on the right hand, as is known: to which I look and trust for relief and assistance, which God in Scripture is said to afford to his people, by being at and holding of their right hand; Psa 73:23; 110:5. What, I say, is this idol Is it not a lie, which though it seems and pretends to be something, and to be a god, yet in truth is nothing but vanity and falsehood, deceiving all that put their trust in it?
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain He feedeth of ashes,.... That is, the idolater delights…
He feedeth of ashes,.... That is, the idolater delights in his idol, pleases himself with seeks comfort and satisfaction from it, fills and feeds himself with hopes and expectations of being helped and delivered by it; but this is all vain hope, a mere delusion; it is as if a man fed on ashes instead of food; it is feeding on that which has no savour nor substance, can yield no nourishment, but, on the contrary, is pernicious and hurtful; and it is like Ephraim's feeding on wind, Hos 12:1 or on chaff instead of wheat, Jer 23:28 and so such who feed upon and delight themselves in sinful lusts, or false doctrines, may be said to feed on the same sort of food: and here it may be true of the idol in a literal sense; part of the wood of which it was made being reduced to ashes, to which some respect may be had, Isa 44:15, and that itself was capable of the same fate. The Targum is,
"behold his god, part of it is ashes;''
Read full note →
so the Vulgate Latin version: "a deceived heart hath turned him aside" from the true God, and the right worship of him, unto idolatry; the heart of man is deceitful, and desperately wicked; a man needs no other to entice him, and draw him away into any sin, and from the living God, than his own evil heart; which, being deceived itself, deceives him, and leads him to the commission of such things as are contrary to reason and common sense: and he is so infatuated with them, and possessed with a strong belief of them,
that he cannot deliver his soul: divest himself of his erroneous and wicked principles, and leave his idolatrous practices, or be persuaded that he is in the wrong:
nor say, is there not a lie in my right hand? that the idol, which his right hand has made, is a lie, a mere vanity, not to be depended upon and trusted in: or which is in, or "at his right hand" (m); and worshipped by him, and is highly esteemed and loved as his right hand; this he cannot be persuaded to believe, and say that it is a falsehood and a work of errors; such is the force and fascination of idolatry, when once persons are ensnared and entangled with it.
(m) "quod est in dextera mea", Piscator; "ad dexteram meam", Junius & Tremellius.
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 Ashes - An unprofitable and pernicious food, and no…
Ashes - An unprofitable and pernicious food, and no less unsatisfying and mischievous is the worship of idols. Deceived heart - A mind corrupted and deceived by deep prejudice, gross error, and especially by his own lusts. Turned - From the way of truth. Deliver - From the snares and dangers of idolatry. Is there not - What is this idol which I set at my right-hand, as the true God is said in scripture to be at the right-hand of his people; which I highly honour, for the most honourable place was on the right-hand; to which I look for relief and assistance, which God in scripture is said to afford to his people, by being at and holding their right-hand. What, I say, is this idol? Is it not a lie, which tho' it pretends to be a God, yet, in truth is nothing but vanity and falsehood?
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 20. He feedeth on ashes] He feedeth on…
Verse 20. He feedeth on ashes] He feedeth on that which affordeth no nourishment; a proverbial expression for using ineffectual means, and bestowing labour to no purpose. In the same sense Hosea says, "Ephraim feedeth on wind." Ho 12:1.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain He feedeth on ashes - There have been various…
He feedeth on ashes - There have been various interpretations of this. Jerome renders it, ‘A part of it is ashes;’ the Chaldee, ‘Lo! half of the god is reduced to ashes;’ the Septuagint, ‘Know thou that their heart is ashes.’ The word rendered here ‘feedeth’ (רעה ro‛eh) means properly “to feed, graze, pasture”; and then, figuratively, to delight, or take pleasure in any person or thing Pro 13:20; Pro 15:14; Pro 28:7; Pro 29:3. In Hos 12:1, ‘Ephraim feedeth on wind,’ it means to strive after something vain or unprofitable; to seek that which will prove to be vain and unsatisfactory. So here it means, that in their idol-service they would not obtain that which they sought. It would be like a man who sought for food, and found it to be dust or ashes; and the service of an idol compared with what man needed, or compared with the true religion, would be like ashes compared with nutritious and wholesome diet. This graphic description of the effect of idolatry is just as true of the ways of sin, and of the pursuits of the world now. It is true of the frivolous and the fashionable; of those who seek happiness in riches and honors; of all those who make this world their portion, that they are feeding on ashes - they seek that which is vain, unsubstantial, unsatisfactory, and which will yet fill the soul itself with disgust and loathing.
A deceived heart hath turned him aside - This is the true source of the difficulty; this is the fountain of all idolatry and sin. The heart is first wrong, and then the understanding, and the whole conduct is turned aside from the path of truth and duty (compare Rom 1:28).
Read full note →
A lie in my right hand - The right hand is the instrument of action. A lie is a name often given to an idol as being false and delusive. The sense is, that that which they had been making, and on which they were depending, was deceitful and vain. The work of their right hand - the fruit of their skill and toil, was deceptive, and could not save them. The doctrine is, that that which sinners rely on to save their souls; that which has cost their highest efforts as a scheme to save them, is false and delusive. All schemes of religion of human origin are of this description: and all will be alike deceptive and ruinous to the soul.
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 Lie. Can I assert in conscience that it is…
Lie. Can I assert in conscience that it is a god?
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).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain feedeth on ashes--figuratively, for the idolater delights in what…
feedeth on ashes--figuratively, for the idolater delights in what is vain (Pro 15:14; Hos 12:1). "Feedeth on wind." There is an allusion, perhaps, also, to the god being made of a tree, the half of which was reduced to ashes by fire (Isa 44:15-17); the idol, it is implied, was no better, and could, and ought, to have been reduced to ashes like the other half.
deceived heart--The heart and will first go astray, then the intellect and life (Rom 1:28; Eph 4:18).
Read full note →
lie in . . . right hand--Is not my handiwork (the idol) a self-deceit?
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 20. He feedeth on ashes] lit., “a shepherd of…
20. He feedeth on ashes] lit., “a shepherd of ashes”. Duhm rather fancifully suggests that the image may be that of a man trying to feed his flock on a pasture that has been reduced to ashes: “A shepherd of (or on) ashes is he whom a deceived heart hath turned aside” (from the ways of reason). Another rendering might be: “One who finds satisfaction in ashes is he whom, &c.” For this sense of the verb râ‘âh see Hos_12:1 (?); Psa_37:3; Pro_15:14, &c. (Gesenius, Lexicon12, sub verbo).
and he shall not deliver his soul] Cf. Isa_44:17.
Read full note →
Is there not a lie …] Am I not cleaving to that which will disappoint my hope?
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 (20) He feedeth on ashes.—The verb passes readily through…
(20) He feedeth on ashes.—The verb passes readily through the meanings “feeding,” “pasturing,” “following after,” and the last is commonly accepted. The first, however, has the merit of greater vividness. (Comp. Hos_12:1.) The “ashes” of the smith’s furnace become the symbols of the vanity of his work (Ecc_7:6), and yet he has not even the germ of truth which lies in the questions of the sceptic.
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 He feedeth on ashes; i.e. on vanity on what…
He feedeth on ashes; i.e. on vanity on what can give no support or sustenance. (comp. Pro_15:14 Hos_12:1) A deceived heart. Either self-deceived, or imposed upon by illusions from without; e.g. the seeming power of the idols, as seen in the victories and conquests of their worshippers. He cannot deliver his soul. The deceived soul is bound in trammels, which it feels to be irksome, and from which it would fain be free. But it cannot deliver itself. Deliverance must come from some external source; in other words, man needs a Deliverer. Is there not a lie in my right hand? An idol is "a lie." It professes to have power, strength, ability to help and save, whereas it has no power at all. It cannot even save itself. Savages often beat their fetishes. Diagoras of Melos threw an image of Hercules into the fire on which he was cooking his dinner, and bade Hercules make himself of some use by boiling his turnips. The powerlessness of idols even to help themselves is represented with much force in the Book of Baruch. (RAPC Bar 6:12-15, 17-22, 27, 49, etc.)
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM Ver. 20. True and false bread.
Read full note →
"He feedeth on ashes." Man does not understand himself. Feed he must: the question is, on what? There are cravings of heart which cannot be repressed. Men are hungry for fame, applause, wealth, honour. Full many a time they taste this fruit; but each apple has ashes at the heart of it. What a picture of contrast is given us by Christ! He tells us of the true bread the living bread, the bread which cometh down from heaven.
I THE TABLE OF THE MEN OF THIS WORLD. Ashes! Is that all? In other words, dust! Yes; everything that does not feed the immortal nature within us is dust. Wealth is dust, and is scattered like dust. Beauty, however fascinating, turns to dust. And so far as the pursuits of man are concerned, how unsatisfying these are! The post of honour is no sooner secured than others are eager to fling the victor down. The famous "garter" is laid on the coffin and the pall. We are told the reason of this sad mistake. "A deceived heart hath turned him aside.
II THE TABLE OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD. They feed on the Bread of God; and this Bread is the Son of God, who said, "I am the Bread of life.
1. Christ must be taken and eaten. Not in the hands. That is impossible. We are to feed on the living Christ. His mind is to be our mind. The soul can only feed on kindred elements. The spiritual nature cannot be satisfied through the senses. Christ must be in us," the Hope of glory.
2. Christ was the broken bread for us. It is the Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary on which we are to feed. My body was broken for yon." So we take into our spiritual being, not only Christ the Example, Christ the Teacher, but Christ the Saviour. And as we eat this bread we live by him, and become like him. He died for us, that we who live should not henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto him who died for us and rose again; for Christ came, not merely to save by teaching, but to teach by saving! W.M.S.
The vanity of irreligion.
In a few vigorous touches the prophet sketches the utter Vanity and the condemnation of idolatry. The idolatrous man:
1. Is relying on that which will miserably disappoint him; what he takes forfood turns out to be nothing better than "ashes.
2. Is misled into the most grievous error; he has been "turned aside" from the highway of truth.
3. Is continually enacting a falsehood; there is "a lie in his right hand." Idolatry is the supreme mistake as well as the most heinous sin. But what is palpably and particularly true of this great iniquity is essentially true of all sin. A sinful life is
I A LIFE OF SADDEST INSUFFICIENCY. "He feedeth on ashes." Like the "apples of Sodom," like the "little book" of the prophet"s vision trey. 10, a guilty action (or a sinful life) is very pleasant on the outside or at the beginning; but within, afterwards, it is bitter and disappointing in the last degree. Crime begins in successful violence or enriching fraud; it ends in the prison or the garret. Vice begins in unholy pleasure, in unprincipled companionship; it ends in distracting pain, in mortal sickness, in cruel loneliness. Ungodliness begins in the delights of eager but unhallowed ambition, of happy but unsanctified affection; it ends in weariness, in heartache, in the discovery that earthly distinctions and human love cannot fill the heart that God made for himself, cannot gladden and ennoble the life that he fashioned for his service. A life spent without God, devoted to selfish gratification, is a life of deep disappointment; the mistaken sinner finds out that the delectable food which he plucked with such keen anticipation is only ashes between his teeth.
II A LIFE OF SERIOUS DEFLECTION. "A deceived heart hath turned them aside." The straight road is the path of piety, of purity, of truthfulness, of sobriety, of justice, of kindness. When men "see light in God"s light," they recognize this path as the one right road in which a man should walk, any deviation from which is error a spiritual wandering. But when the heart is deceived, when the soul is corrupted by "the deceitfulness of sin," when the inward "eye is evil" and consequently the whole body is full of darkness, then it seems to the deluded spirit that the wrong way is the right one, that the green, downward slopes of folly and sin are the highway of wisdom. And the worst of it is that the path of sin does not run near to and parallel with the way of life; it goes off from it at an angle which is continually increasing, so that the further a man goes along this evil road the greater distance he is away from that in which he should be walking. Every step takes the mistaken traveller further from his course. And when men have wholly lost sight of the beauties of holiness, of the excellency of holy service, of the claims of Divine benefaction; when they are so far off the true track that the voices of heavenly wisdom no longer reach their ear; they are helpless, they are lost. The deceived and deluded pilgrim "cannot deliver his soul.
III A LIFE OF PRACTICAL FALSITY. "Is there not a lie in my right hand?" Men are often living falsehoods when they are not putting them into words; the lie is not on their lips but in their right hand. The man who is withholding his heart from God and his life from his service is saying, by his chosen course, by his daily doings, by his deliberate action, that it is better to live a selfish than a devoted life; that the claims of Christ may be neglected; that the temporal is of more consequence than the eternal, the material than the spiritual; that happiness is more worth seeking than blessedness, the honour that cometh from man than the approval of the heavenly Father. These are fatal falsehoods, which lure men to sin and lead them down to death. Happy is that wandering soul who sees a form that comes to rescue, who hears a voice that summons to redeem that One who says, "Man shall not live by bread alone;" "He that cometh to me shall never hunger;" that voice which says, "Return unto me, and I will return unto you;" "In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death". C. (Pro_12:28)
The ill-fed soul.
The expression, "he feedeth on ashes," is proverbial in the East for that which is done to no purpose that which is vain, unsatisfying, disappointing. Hugh Macmillan gives some accounts of depraved and perverted appetite in the use of earth for food. He says, "This propensity is not an occasional freak, but a common custom, and is found among so large a number and variety of tribes, that it may be regarded as coextensive with the human race. From time immemorial the Chinese have been in the habit of using various kinds of edible earths as substitutes for bread in time of scarcity; and their imperial annals have always religiously noticed the discovery of such bread-stones, or stone-meal, as they are called. On the western coast of Africa a yellowish kind of earth, called caovac, is so highly relished, and so constantly consumed by the negroes, that it has become to them a necessary of life. In the island of Java, and in various parts of the hill country of India, a reddish earth is baked into cakes, and sold in the village markets for food." But such food cannot give due nourishment to the body. It is unnatural, unsatisfying. Our souls need healthy and satisfying food as truly as our bodies do; and men"s folly in respect of their bodies only illustrates their much greater folly in respect of their souls. So many of us are ill fed, injudiciously fed. After showing what is the proper nutriment for a renewed soul, leading up to the mystical expression of our Lord, as recorded by John, "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed," it may be shown that food for the soul is insufficient and injurious when it is
I ILL SELECTED. It must be good, but it must also be appropriate and adapted. The word of the preacher must be such as "ministers" grace to the hearers." The supreme question for each one is Do the means of grace minister grace to me? I may be at the feast, yet be ill fed.
II ILL PREPARED. Food that is in itself good is often made unsuitable for us in the cooking. Teachings may be spoiled by the vanity or the over adornment of the teachers. Especially teachings may be ill prepared as they lack the true spiritual flavour. Then they come to us as the word of man rather than as the word of God.
III ILL PROPORTIONED. Sometimes in excess; at other times deficient. We may at times be starved, and at others surfeited. We may have the false appetite, which feeds voraciously at times. We may, in religious things, run too hard along particular lines, interest ourselves only in sides and aspects of truth, and so become ill-fed souls.
IV ILL SUSTAINED. In respect of soul-feeding the law for the body applies. Little and often. Plain and regular. Therefore are we taught to pray, "Give us day by day our daily bread." And to teach us that we want food, not luxuries, Christ said of himself, "I am the Bread of life. 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 He feedeth on ashes
Isa_44:20
He feedeth on ashes
Read full note →
Earth used as food
One of the most extraordinary examples of depraved or perverted appetite is the use of earth for food.
This propensity is not an occasional freak, but a common custom, and is found among so large a number and variety of tribes that it may be regarded as co-extensive with the human race. From time immemorial the Chinese have been in the habit of using various kinds of edible earth as substitutes for bread in times of scarcity; and their imperial annals have always religiously noticed the discovery of such bread-stones, or stone-meal, as they are called. On the western coast of Africa a yellowish kind of earth, called caouac, is so highly relished, and so constantly consumed by the negroes, that it has become to them a necessary of life. In the island of Java, and in various parts of the hill-country of India, a reddish earth is baked into cakes and sold in the village markets for food; while on the banks of the Orinoco, in South America, Humboldt mentions that the native Indians find a species of unctuous clay, which they knead into balls, and store up in heaps in their huts as a provision for the winter or rainy season. They are not compelled by famine to have recourse to this clay; for even when fish, game, and fruit are plentiful they still eat it after their food as a luxury. This practice of eating earth is not confined solely to the inhabitants of the Tropics. In the north of Norway and in Swedish Lapland a kind of white powdery earth, called mountain-meal, found under beds of decayed moss, is consumed in immense quantities every year. It is mixed by the people with their bread in times of scarcity; and even in Germany it has been frequently used as a means of allaying hunger. All these examples of the use of earth as food are so contrary to our experience that they might seem incredible were it not that they are thoroughly authenticated. Such an unnatural custom must, in the long run, prove injurious to the constitution of those who indulge in it, although it is wonderful how long it can be carried on by some individuals apparently with impunity. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Feeding on ashes:
In the spiritual world there are many who feed upon ashes. The prophet is speaking of the idolater.
I. WHO IS THE IDOLATER--who is the he that is said to feed on ashes? The prophet had a definite audience before him. He was prophesying to the children of Israel. Notwithstanding the purity and sublimity of their own monotheistic creed, and the awful threatenings and sanctions with which it was guarded, we can trace throughout their entire history, as a marked feature of their character, a propensity to blend a theoretical belief in the true God with an accommodating reverence to the idols of the heathen Pantheon. Except when under the immediate spell of some special revelation of Jehovah, they craved for some visible shape or outward sign of the divinity--a craving which was satisfied for a time by the erection of the tabernacle and temple, and the establishment of the worship connected with them, but which soon overleaped barriers thus imposed upon it, and sought for novel sensations in the tabernacle of Moloch and in the star of the god Remphan--figures which they made to worship them. The very priests and Levites, who were most concerned in keeping the worship of Jehovah pure, were the leaders of the various national apostasies. Isaiah deeply deplored this national fickleness and spiritual inconstancy. In the passage under consideration he seeks to overwhelm it with contempt. Were Isaiah addressing us in these days his ideas would be the same, though the form in which he would present them would be different. Material idolatry, in its literal import, has passed away among civilised nations. But the essence of the temptation remains the same. Human society is changed, but human nature is unchanged. The impulse which led to idolatry is therefore as strong at the present day as it was in the time of Isaiah; and images are set up and worshipped now as fantastic as any pagan fetich or joss. The New Testament form of the Second Commandment, Be not conformed to this world, requires to be frequently and urgently enforced. If I were to sum up all spiritual idolatry in these days in one form, I should call it worldliness, for everything else is but a phase of this. And this worldly conformity leads speedily, in most instances, to a low moral standard, and to a weak and corrupt form of religion, and produces the same humiliating results which flowed from the idolatry of ancient times.
II. WHAT IS IDOLATRY? It is a perverted spiritual appetite. In certain diseased states of the brain there is an unnatural craving for the most extraordinary and unwholesome substances. Men and women under such morbid influences have been known to eat cinders and sand with apparent relish, and even to prefer them to the richest dainties. In such cases it is not the appetite that is at fault. The controlling power of the brain, which chooses the proper food, is impaired, and this healthy appetite is set to work upon substances which are altogether unsuitable. In like manner idolatry arises from a natural craving of the soul, which was made for God, for His worship and enjoyment. It finds that it must go out of itself for the blessedness it needs. This spiritual appetite is a God-given instinct of our nature. It is the soul seeking its highest good. It is healthy and natural. But when, under the guidance and power of a deceived heart, it seeks its gratification in earthly things to the exclusion altogether of God, it affords a most melancholy example of a perverted spiritual appetite.
III. WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF IDOLATRY? How does idolatry affect the man guilty of it? There is a very striking and beautiful relation between the food of man and his digestive organs. He is omnivorous. He is the ruler of the world, and therefore the varied life of the world must throb in his veins. But all the varied food which she presents to him must be organic food. Phosphorus literally flames in the brain, that thoughts may breathe and words may burn; lime gives solidity to the bones; the alkaline salts promote the oxidation and removal of the effete materials of the body. Common minerals--iron, sulphur, soda, potash, and others--circulate in the blood, or are garnered in the various tissues. But all these inorganic materials are furnished, not from the earth directly, but in the food; the various vegetable and animal products containing them in varying quantities. Such being the law of mans nutrition, it will be seen at once that if he feeds directly upon ashes, he is feeding upon substances that are altogether incongruous, and unfitted to nourish him. His organs cannot digest or assimilate ashes. And is not the analogy between spiritual and natural things here very clear? If mans spiritual appetite can feed only on God, then if man seeks his portion only in the things of the world, what can you expect but spiritual indigestion and misery? It is true, indeed, that just as the body requires inorganic elements--salt, lime, and iron--as well as organic, for its proper nourishment, so man requires the things of the world as well as the things of faith for his spiritual welfare. But then we are to seek these temporal things, not directly from the world, but through the channel of communion with God. There are natures that, by a long course of feeding upon ashes, have become accustomed to this unnatural diet. Like the clay-eaters of South America, their digestive organs become assimilated to their food, and they are put to little inconvenience by it. We meet with persons who are satisfied with their portion in this world, who mind earthly things, and are contented with the nourishment for their souls which they find in them. But are such persons the truly great and noble ones of our race? How can an infinite hunger be appeased by a finite good? The soul wants organised food; food that has spiritual life in it; food that is redolent of the sunshine and permeated with the light of heaven; food that has drunk in all the impalpable virtues and forces of the things unseen and eternal; food that can gather up in itself these vitalising influences, and transfer them to us to glow within our veins and animate our nerves; and, instead of that, we get ashes out of which all the glow and the virtue have departed. Our sin will become our punishment; our idols our scourges. I have remarked that there are some who are satisfied with their worldly portion--who, though feeding upon clay, are not put to inconvenience by it. Such individuals, in the midst of their contentment, are in reality, if they only knew it, more to be pitied than those whose truer instincts are tortured by the unsuitable food by which they endeavour to appease their spiritual cravings. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Feeding on ashes
I. THE VAIN OBJECTS TO WHICH MAN DIRECTS HIS ENERGIES. He feedeth on ashes.
II. THE REASON OF THIS PERVERTED CHOICE. A deceived heart hath turned him aside. Sin, in its very nature, has a tendency to harden the heart. When it first begins to make advances, there is resistance offered to it. Conscience speaks, expostulates, reproaches; but sin gets the mastery. Conscience becomes by degrees blunted; the heart at length gets callous, that it cannot feel; the eye is altogether darkened, that it cannot see; the ear heavy, that it cannot hear the instruction of wisdom. Thus the heart is in due time thoroughly deceived. It rejoices in evil, instead of in good; it has an exclusive appetite for the bitter instead of the sweet. But there is a diseased state of the heart where the fatal results do not appear so manifest to the eye of man. When the world is keenly loved and followed, when self is worshipped, when God is not supreme in the affection, the root must be looked for in the heart. The heart is deceived. How dangerous is this state of heart! How much does it need of watchfulness in the case of every one of us, so that we may not be ensnared by it.
III. THE DANGER OF THIS STATE, AND THE DIFFICULTY OF ITS REMEDY. He cannot deliver himself. When the heart has been once beguiled by the deceitfulness of sin, and its affections have been riveted and firmly fixed upon earthly things, it is not in man to deliver himself. God, indeed, has provided means whereby those who have banished themselves from Him may be brought home to His fold. In Him there resides power to cut asunder the chain, however firmly it may bind us down to the earth.
IV. SOME PRACTICAL QUESTIONS FOR OUR EXAMINATION. Is there not a lie in my right hand? (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)
I. WHAT THE SOUL PROPERLY REQUIRES. We cannot find food for the body in ourselves; we have to look for it in the animal or vegetable world. Our spiritual part--our intellect, conscience, affections--is every whit as dependent on extraneous supplies as our bodies are.
The deceived heart:
I propose to show--
II. HOW PERILOUSLY FAR SOME ARE FROM GIVING TO THEIR SOULS WHAT THEY REQUIRE. You see this magnificent provision; it is spread before your eyes. But the question is, are you feeding on it? Feeding implies taking it to yourself, appropriating it, masticating it with pleasure, receiving it into your digestion. It then becomes a part of you, and goes into your bones, your blood, your flesh, your marrow. We admit that you come to the feast, that you admire it, and that you intend to eat; but we cannot admit that you are feeding on it thus far. We cannot say you have the Word of God dwelling in you richly in all wisdom. (J. Bolton, B. A.)
A perverted appetite:
Two lessons were learnt by Israel in captivity--the all-sufficiency of God, and the absurdity of idols. It is on the latter of these that we are now to dwell. Why do men act with such inconceivable folly? The prophet knows nothing of the modern theory that men do not worship the stone or wood, but accept the effigy as a help to fixedness of thought and prayer; he would affirm that with the mass of men this is a fiction, and that the worship of the devotee stops short with what he can see and touch. The cause of idolatry lies deeper. He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, &c.
I. THERE IS A HUNGER FOR THE DIVINE IN MAN.
1. It is universal.
2. It is significant. We can tell something of the composition of the human body by the materials which it needs for its sustenance. Similarly the true dignity of man betrays itself in the hunger which perpetually preys upon him. If man is only matter, if thought is only the movement of the grey matter of the brain, if there is no spirit and no beyond, how is it that the material world cannot supply the supreme good?
3. It is inevitable. The functions which food performs in our system are threefold. It is needed to replace the perpetual waste which is always wearing down the natural tissues; to maintain the temperature at some 98°; and to provide materials for growth. And each of these has a spiritual analogy. We need God, for the same three reasons as the body needs food.
(1) To replace the perpetual waste of our spiritual forces.
(2) For warmth and heat.
(3) For growth.
II. THIS APPETITE MAY BE PERVERTED. He feedeth on ashes. Men tamper with their natural appetite. But there is a close similarity in their treatment with that wonderful yearning after the unseen and eternal which is part of the very constitution of our being--a hunger after the ideal Food, the ideal Beauty, the ideal Truth, which may be resisted and ignored, but still claims satisfaction; and if it does not get it in God, it will seek it in the ashes of idolatry. Men worship idols yet. The man of the world worships money, rank, high office. The child of fashion worships in the temple of human opinion, and feeds on the ashes of human applause an appetite which was meant to satisfy itself on the Well done! of the Almighty. The student who questions or denies the Being of God, worships in the temple of learning; and feeds with the ashes of human opinion an appetite which was intended to be nourished by eternal truth. And in every case these substitutes for God, with which men try to satisfy themselves, are as incapable of satisfying the heart, as ashes of supporting the physical life.
III. THE TRUE BREAD.
1. It is the gift of God. My Father giveth the true Bread from heaven. God who made thee hunger for bread, made bread to grow for its appeasement. Other vegetables have their peculiar habitat. But the cornplant will make its home in every land, and grow on every soil. He has also provided beauty for our taste, truth for our thought, love for our heart; and has gathered all these and much more into His one Gift, Jesus Christ.
2. Nature yields her provision to man through death. So it is through death that Jesus has become the Food of men. We must assimilate our food. We must receive Jesus into our hearts by an act of spiritual apprehension. (F. B.Meyer, B. A.)
Feeding on ashes:
I shall speak of three classes of young men who are feeding on ashes.
I. Those who are giving themselves up to SENSUAL PLEASURE. There is no one on earth who has so much right to the pleasures of the world as the believer. I do not believe in asceticism. I do not believe in pious melancholy. But this innocent hilarity, which leaves no ill results behind, is good and healthful, and a very different thing from the emmaddening gaieties of the world.
II. I have a word to say to you who are setting up another idol for your worship. It is neither Venus nor Bacchus, but it is Plutus; it is WORLDLY SUBSTANCE; it is money. There is no sin in desiring to be rich, if your money comes to you honourably, and goes from you usefully. But what is all that, if that is all? Can you feed the immortal soul within you with bank cheques and good investments? Will all the gold in the Bank of England appease the hunger of your deathless spirit? No! But many seem to think it will. Such men are the most hopeless cases to deal with. I should be more sanguine of bringing to the feet of Jesus a poor bloated debauchee, than of doing any good to one of these hardened, wizened, shrivelled-up money-scrapers, who for twenty, thirty, or forty years have no other thought but this--to lay up gain.
III. There is a third class of men who are daily feeding on ashes, because a deceived heart has turned them aside. They have got hold of a lot of INFIDEL LITERATURE, and they are stuffing their souls with as weak and poisonous rubbish as it is possible to meet with. With the prophet, I invite you to something more palatable and nourishing; I bid you to a feast of milk and honey; hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. (J. T. Davidson, D. D.)
Feeding on ashes:
Many to-day feed on the kind of ashes Isaiah has in mind.
1. False conceptions of God.
2. False conceptions of Christ.
3. False conceptions of religion.
4. False conceptions of the Church.
5. False conceptions of morality, life, and happiness.
Application:--
1. Upon the true or false conception of God and His relations to men conduct depends. The Christians conception of God is revealed in the incarnation, life, and atonement of His Son. He only is a true Christian who obeys Christs words, imitates His life, and becomes conformed to His image. He must be our ideal.
2. Again, we ask how comes it that men thus feed on ashes? A deceived heart hath turned him aside. (J. B. Nies, Ph. D.)
Feeding on ashes:
To-day we are told by a hundred voices that all religion begins at the bottom, and slowly struggles up to the top. Isaiah says the very opposite. The pure form is the primitive; the secondary form is the gross, which is a corruption. They tell us, too, that all religion pursues a process of evolution, and gradually clears itself of its more imperfect and carnal elements. Isaiah says He cannot deliver his soul, and no religion ever worked itself up, unless under the impulse of a revelation from without. That is Isaiahs philosophy of idolatry, and I expect it will be accepted as the true one some day.
I. A LIFE THAT SUBSTANTIALLY IGNORES GOD IS EMPTY OF ALL TRUE SATISFACTION. He feedeth on ashes. Very little imagination will realise the force of that picture. The gritty cinders will irritate the lips and tongue, will dry up the moisture of the mouth, will interfere with the breathing; and there will be no nourishment in a sackful of them. The underlying truth is this--God only is the food of a mans soul. You pick up the skeleton of a bird upon a moor; and if you know anything about osteology, you will see in the very make of its breast-bone and its wing-bones the declaration that its destiny is to soar into the blue. And written on you, as distinctly as flight on the bird, or swimming on the fish, is this, that you are meant, by your very make, to soar up into the heights of the glory of God, and to plunge deep into the abysses of His infinite love and wisdom. What does your heart want? A perfect, changeless, all-powerful love. And what does your mind want? Reliable, guiding, inexhaustible yet accessible truth. And what does your will want? Commandments which have an authoritative ring in their very utterance, and which will serve for infallible guides for your lives. And what do our weak, sinful natures want? Something that shall free our consciences, and deliver us from the burden of our transgressions, and calm our fears, and quicken and warrant our lofty hopes. And what do men whoso nature is to live for ever want but something that shall go with them through all changes of condition? We want a person to be everything to us. No accumulation of things will satisfy a man. God has not so blundered in making the world that He has surrounded us with things that are all lies, but He has so made it that whosoever flies in the face of the gracious commandment which is also an invitation, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, has not only no security that the other things shall be added unto him, but has the certainty that though they were added to him, in degree beyond his dreams and highest hopes, they would avail nothing to satisfy the hunger of his heart.
II. A LIFE WHICH THUS IGNORES GOD IS TRAGICALLY UNAWARE OF ITS OWN EMPTINESS. A deceived heart hath turned him aside. That explains how the man comes to fancy that ashes are food. His whole nature is perverted, his vision distorted, his power of judgment marred. That explains, too, why men persist in this feeding on ashes after all experience. You will see a dog chasing a sparrow. It has chased hundreds before and never caught one. Yet, when the creature rises from the ground, away it goes after it once more, with eager yelp and rush, to meet the old experience. That is like what a great many of you are doing, and you have not the same excuse that the dog has. And that deceived heart, stronger than experience, is also stronger than conscience. How is it that this hallucination that you have fed full and been satisfied, when all the while your hunger has not been appeased, can continue to act on us? For the very plain reason that every one of us has in himself a higher and a lower self, a set of desires of the grosser, more earthly, and, using the word in its proper sense, worldly sort--that is to say, directed towards material things, and a higher set which look right up to God if they are allowed fair play. And of these two sets--which really are one at bottom, if a man would only see it--the lower gets the upper hand, and suppresses the higher and the nobler.And so in many a man and woman the longing for God is crushed out by the gross delights of sense.
III. A LIFE THUS IGNORING GOD NEEDS A POWER FROM WITHOUT TO SET IT FREE. He cannot deliver his soul. There is nothing more awful in life than the influence of habit. There is something more wanted than yourselves to break this chain. It is the Christ who is the Bread of God that came down from heaven; who can deliver any soul from the most obstinate and long continued grovelling amongst the transitory things of this limited world, and the superficial delights of sense and gratified bodily life; who can bring the forgiveness which is essential, the deliverance from the power of evil which is not less essential, and who can fill our hearts with Himself, the food of the world. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The deceived heart:
I. THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO ARE ENTIRELY DECEIVED IN THEIR RELIGION.
1. The idolater.
2. The Romanist.
3. Freethinkers.
4. False professors.
II. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE MANY PERSONS THUS DECEIVED IN RELIGION, WE ARE NOT TO SUPPOSE THAT ANY OF THEM ARE REALLY CONTENTED IN HEART WITH THEIR RELIGION.
III. IT IS A STRANGE THING THAT ALL THESE PEOPLE SEEM VERY WELL CONTENTED WITH THEIR FALSE RELIGIONS.
IV. I WANT TO SPEAK TO THOSE WHO ARE PROFESSORS OF RELIGION BUT WHO DO NOT POSSESS IT. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The deceitfulness of the heart in embracing false confidences
The heart discovers its deceitfulness--
I. BY ITS STRONG PROPENSITY TO RECEIVE ANY ERROR MORE READILY THAN TRUTH.
II. BY ITS EXTREME RELUCTANCE TO THE ONLY WAY OF SALVATION, AND BY ITS VIOLENT PROPENSITY TO EVERY LYING REFUGE. More particularly we observe--
1. That multitudes betake themselves to the general mercy of God.
2. The heart often disposes one to look into itself for something good.
3. Others found their hope on resolutions of reformation.
4. Partial and outward reformation is the confidence of many.
5. Many confide in a bare profession of religion and observation of the form of duties.
6. Others deceive themselves into a reliance on their Church privileges.
7. Some confide in their gifts, or in their usefulness by means of them.
8. Some may trust to a work of the law, as if it were in itself saving.
9. This principle of deceit is discovered by the sinners endeavours to obtain justification by moral duties.
10. Many trust to their sincerity in religion. But what is this sincerity in which you make your boast before God? Do you not confide in it as the ground of your justification? If so, it must be the sincerity of a person who is not yet justified; that is, of one still under the curse of the law.
11. Another false confidence, which many fly to, is the observance of superstitious rites.
12. Some may rest on their sufferings in the cause of Christ.
13. Others may depend on a notional faith. Some are persuaded of the truth of the Gospel. But they prove that their faith is not Divine, because it is unfruitful.
14. The deceitfulness of the heart operates in others, by making them rest upon supposed attainments in holiness. There is a question the solution of which materially affects every one of us before God. If false professors may have so eminent attainments, and so remarkable a resemblance to true holiness, how may we distinguish between such attainments as are the fruit of the Spirits saving work and those which only flow from natural affections or from a common operation?
(1) These attainments, which are saving, have always a humbling tendency.
(2) Saving attainments are consistent with a godly jealousy.
(3) The fruit of solid Christian attainments is thankfulness to God.
(4) The Christian disclaims all his attainments with respect to justification.
(5) Saving attainments leave a lasting impression on the heart.
(6) The real believer loses not his confidence in God, even under severe afflictions.
(7) The real Christian does not wish to stop short in his attainments.
(8) The believer is equal, or at least consistent, in his attainments. While he makes progress in duty, in the exercise of grace, in liveliness and spirituality of affections, he at the same time advances in the mortification of sin.
(9) All true Christians have a real love to holiness, (J. Jamieson, M. A.)
Perverted spiritual appetites:
Drunkenness is a perverted spiritual appetite, a seeking in the creature what God alone can give, the longing of the soul for higher and purer happiness than the hard round of daily life and the weary sorrowful circle of the world can give. So, too, covetousness, if analysed in the same way, will be found to be a perverted spiritual appetite, a misdirected worship. Covetousness is identified in Scripture with idolatry: Covetousness which is idolatry, says St. Paul. No covetous man, who is an idolater, hath an inheritance in the kingdom of God. The love of money, as it has been well said, is the love of God run wild, the diseased action of a spiritual appetite, the aberration of a nature that was made for God. Wealth is the mystic shadow of God, which the soul is unconsciously groping after and craving for. It presents some faint features of resemblance to Him. It seems omnipotent, able to do all things; omnipresent, showing signs of itself everywhere; beneficent, supplying our present wants, providing for our future, procuring for us an endless variety of blessings, and giving us almost all that our hearts can desire. And because it presents these superficial resemblances to God, it becomes a religion to many, a worship loud in praise and aspiration as any that ever filled a church. And so is it with every form of idolatry of which man in these enlightened days can be guilty. It is the soul, in its restless pursuit of happiness, mistaking the true object of which it is in quest. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Arsenical poisoning:
The peasant women of Styria are in the habit of constantly eating a certain quantity of arsenic, in order to enhance their personal charms. It imparts a beautiful bloom to the complexion, and gives a full and rounded appearance to the face and body. For years they persevere in this dangerous practice; but if they intermit it for a single day, they experience all the symptoms of arsenical poisoning. The complexion fades, the features become worn and haggard, and the body loses its plumpness and becomes angular and emaciated. Having once begun, therefore, to use this cosmetic, they must in self-defence go on, constantly increasing the dose in order to keep up the effect. At last the constitution is undermined; the limit of safety is overpassed; and the victim of foolish vanity perishes miserably in the very prime of life. And is it not so with those who feed upon the poison of the worlds idolatries? They may seem to thrive upon this insidious and dangerous diet, but all the time it is permanently impairing their spiritual health, and rendering them unfit for spiritual communion. The more they indulge in it, the more they must surrender themselves to it; and the jaded appetite is stimulated on to greater excesses, until at last every lingering vestige of spiritual vitality is destroyed, and the soul becomes a loathsome moral wreck, poisoned by its own food. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Unsuitable food:
There is such a thing as a wasting of the body from insufficient nutrition, even when the appetite is satisfied and the stomach content. A strange plant, called the nardoo, with clover-like leaves, closely allied to the fern tribe, grows in the deserts of Central Australia. A melancholy interest is connected with it, owing to the fact that its seeds formed for several months almost the sole food of the party of explorers who a few years ago crossed the continent. This nardoo satisfied their hunger; it produced a pleasant feeling of comfort and repletion. The natives were accustomed to eat it in the absence of their usual roots and fruits, not only without injury, but apparently with positive benefit to their health. And yet, day after day, Burke and Wills became weaker and more emaciated upon this diet. Their flesh wasted from their bones, their strength was reduced to an infants feebleness, and they could only crawl painfully a mile or two in a day. At last, when nearing the bourne of their hopes, the explorers perished one by one of starvation; a solitary survivor being found in the last extremity under a tree, where he had laid him down to die, by a party sent out in search of the missing expedition. When analysed, the nardoo bread was ascertained to be destitute of certain nutritious elements indispensable to the support of a European, though an Australian savage might for a while find it beneficial as an alternative. And thus it happened that these poor unfortunate Englishmen perished of starvation, even while feeding fully day by day upon food that seemed to satisfy their hunger. Now, is it not precisely so in the experience of those who are seeking and finding their portion in earthly things? They are contented with it, and yet their hunger is in reality unappeased. Their desires are crowned, and yet they are actually perishing of want. God gives them their request, but sends leanness to their souls. Is it not far more dreadful to perish by slow degrees of this spiritual atrophy, under the delusive belief that all is well, and therefore seeking no change of food, than to be tortured by the indigestion of feeding on ashes, if by this misery the poor victim can be urged to seek for food convenient for him? (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
He feedeth on ashes:
Is not the very term most significant? What are ashes? They are the last solid products of matter that has been used up--the relics that remain after all that is useful and nutritious has been consumed. You burn a piece of wood or a handful of corn, and its grosser particles fall to the ground, while all its ethereal parts--its carbon and hydrogen--mount to the skies and disappear. It is a sad thing to gaze upon the ashes of the commonest fire; for in them there is an image of utter death and ruin--of something that has been bright and beautiful, and is now but dull, cold, barren dust. And what are earthly, created things, upon which so many are feeding the hunger of their immortal souls, but ashes?
They were once bright and beautiful. Gods blessing was upon them, and they were very good. But sin has consumed all their goodness and beauty, has burned up all in them that was capable of ministering to the spiritual wants of men, and left nothing behind but dust and ashes. We can apply this truth to all the world, so far as it is made the portion of the soul. In a moral sense, the whole world, which was once capable of ministering to mans spiritual wants, is now a mere heap of cinders. Its beauty has gone with its goodness, and its sufficing power with its holiness. It has become spiritually oxidised by combination with the all-devouring element of sin. The man that loves the world now feeds on ashes; not upon earth, for there is a degree of nourishment in soil, owing to the remains of former life, and the worm and the plant feed upon it; not upon clay, for the clay which the American-Indians eat is found to consist of microscopic plants with silicious envelopes, called diatoms, containing a small portion of organic matter sufficient to sustain existence;--no, but on dry, white, dusty ashes, utterly destitute of any nutritious element whatever, upon which no creature can live, and upon which almost no plant can grow--the refuse of everything that is good. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Unsuitable food:
Some time ago, I read in the papers of a little boy who for months had been gathering up prune-stones, being fond of the kernel; so, wishing to prepare for himself a great treat, he laid up quite a large store: at last came the day of anticipated enjoyment; he ate them all, and, after hours of agony, died! So I have seen men who have given up their whole life to one aim, to amass wealth; preparing a banquet of enjoyment for the evening of their days; and, when they sat down to the feast, lo! on the table only ashes, ashes! (J. T. Davidson, D. D.)
A deceived heart hath turned him aside
The self-deception of most who affect to be infidels
1. Consider seriously, what was the real origin of your unbelief. A fathers house forsaken, and a fathers instructions soon to be forgotten, you entered on the world. Passions rose within you. Companions encouraged them; religion checked them. Your belief became irksome to your indulgence; and your faith descended to doubts. It was natural and necessary that it should do so, if you meant to continue in your sins.
2. You have had times, no doubt, when you thought your course somewhat wrong; and, partly sated with such enjoyments, had some idea of turning from them. What, then, was the obstacle? Was it the difficulty which you had in accounting for the truth of revelation? Was it not the voice of pleasure whispering, Will you then renounce the joys which were once so dear to you? Here was the fatal obstacle. Not in the difficulties of revelation, but in the timidity and weakness of the heart.
3. If this be not true, go one step farther. Many have met with calamity; a death unexpected among your friends, some great and sudden change of fortune, which showed you the uncertainty of human happiness. In these cases, what was your resource? Did you go to the tables, whither before you had gone for pleasure? Was it in the society of those who make a mock at sin that you expected the gleam of comfort in the hour of sorrow? Your heart will own that, when you were in heaviness, you could think upon God. But religions truth all the time remained the same. If, therefore, you doubted on it under the former situation, why not under the latter? Your heart deceived you. You did not disbelieve. You wished to do so; and passion blinded you. Affliction removed the veil from your heart.
4. But, living as we do in an age of boasted light, this reasoning will probably be considered as carried too far; and it will be urged by many a young man, that, although the passions may have had some influence in biassing his opinions, yet his doubts of the Gospel have arisen, in some measure, from his judgment. Let us, then, meet him on this ground. We expect, therefore, from you some striking argument that is to set aside at once the authority of ages and destroy the best hopes and resources of the human heart. And what do we find? A few common-place phrases and objections--doubts, not created by yourselves, but only received from others, and kept up by you, to preserve a kind of watchword of a party against believers.
5. But if you have not searched very deeply into these things yourself, they with whom you are in the habit of associating are adequate to give you sufficient religious instruction, and you have taken, you say, your creed chiefly from them. Let us, then, repair a moment to them. You profess yourselves general believers in a God, and possessed of some amiable virtues. How often in the assemblies of your friends and instructors is the name of God mentioned without irreverence? How seldom have you heard rigid virtue made the subject of discussion except to be ridiculed? Have you often heard beauty and innocence mentioned without some sentiment of an abandoned passion? (G. Mathew, M. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Isaiah
FEEDING ON ASHES
Read full note →
Isa 44:20.
The prophet has been pouring fierce scorn on idolaters. They make, he says, the gods they worship. They take a tree and saw it up: one log serves for a fire to cook their food, and with compass and pencil and plane they carve the figure of a man, and then they bow down to it and say, ‘Deliver me, for thou art my god!’ He sums up the whole in this sentence of my text, in which the tone changes from bitter irony to astonished pity. Now, if this were the time and the place, one would like to expand and illustrate the deep thoughts in these words in reference to idolatry; thoughts which go dead in the teeth of a great deal that is now supposed to be scientifically established, but which may be none the more true for all that. He asserts that idolatry is empty, a feeding on ashes. He declares, in opposition to modern ideas, that the low, gross forms of polytheism and idol-worship are a departure from a previous higher stage, whereas to-day we are told by a hundred voices that all religion begins at the bottom, and slowly struggles up to the top. Isaiah says the very opposite. The pure form is the primitive; the secondary form is the gross, which is a corruption. They tell us too, nowadays, that all religion pursues a process of evolution, and gradually clears itself of its more imperfect and carnal elements. Isaiah says, ‘he cannot deliver his soul’; and no religion ever worked itself up, unless under the impulse of a revelation from without. That is Isaiah’s philosophy of idolatry, and I expect it will be accepted as the true one some day.
But my text has a wider bearing. It not only describes, in pathetic language, the condition of the idolater, but it is true about all lives, which are really idolatrous in so far as they make anything else than God their aim and their joy. Every word of this text applies to such lives-that is to say, to the lives of a good many people listening to me now. And I would fain try to lay the truths here on some hearts. Let me just take them as they lie in the words before me.
I. A life that substantially ignores God is empty of all true satisfaction.
‘He feedeth on ashes’! Very little imagination will realise the force of that picture. The gritty cinders will irritate the lips and tongue, will dry up the moisture of the mouth, will interfere with the breathing, and there will be no nourishment in a sackful of them.
Dear brethren, the underlying truth is this-God is the only food of a man’s soul. You pick up the skeleton of a bird upon a moor; and if you know anything about osteology-the science of bones-you will see, in the very make of its breast-bone and its wing-bones, the declaration that its destiny was to soar into the blue. You pick up the skeleton of a fish lying on the beach, and you will see in its very form and characteristics that its destiny is to expatiate in the depths of the sea. And, written on you, as distinctly as flight on the bird, or swimming on the fish, is this, that you are meant, by your very make, to soar up into the heights of the glory of God, and to plunge deep into the abysses of His infinite love and wisdom. Man is made for God. ‘Whose image and superscription hath it?’ said Christ. The coin belongs to the king whose head and titles are displayed upon it; and on your heart, friend, though a usurper has tried to recoin the piece, and put his own foul image on the top of the original one, is stamped deep that you belong to the King of kings, to God Himself.
For what does our heart want? A perfect, changeless, all-powerful love. And what does our mind want? Reliable, guiding, inexhaustible, and yet accessible truth. And what does our will want? Commandments which have an authoritative ring in their very utterance, and which will serve for infallible guides for our lives. And what do our weak, sinful natures want? Something that shall free our consciences, and shall deliver us from the burden of our transgressions, and shall calm our fears, and shall quicken and warrant our lofty hopes. And what do men whose destiny is to live for ever want but something that shall go with them through all changes of condition, and, like a light in the midst of the darkest tunnel, shall burn in the passage between this and the other world, and shall never be taken away from them? We want a Person to be everything to us. No accumulation of things will satisfy a man. And we want all our treasures to be in one Person, and we need that that Person shall live as long as we live, and as long as we need shall be sufficient to supply us. And all this is only the spelling in many letters of the one name-God. That is what we want, that, and nothing less.
Then the next step that I suggest to you is, that where a man will take God for the food of his spirit, and turn love and mind and will and conscience and practical life to Him, seeing Him in everything, and seeing all things in Him; saturating, as it were, the universe with the thought of God, and recreating his own spirit with communion of friendship to Him; to that man lower goods do first disclose their real sweetness, their most poignant delight, and their most solid satisfaction. To say of a world where God has set us, that it is all ‘vanity and vexation of spirit,’ goes in flat contradiction to what He said when, creation finished, He looked upon His world, and proclaimed to the waiting seraphim around that ‘it was very good.’ There is a view of the world which calls itself pious, but is really an insult to God; and the irreligious pessimism that is fashionable nowadays, as if human life were a great mistake, and everything were mean and poor and insufficient, is contrary to the facts and to the consciousness of every man. But if you make things first which were meant to be second, then you make what was meant to be food ‘ashes.’ They are all good in their place. Wealth is good; wisdom is good; success is good; love is good. And all these things may be enjoyed without God, and will each of them yield their proportional satisfaction to the part of our nature to which they belong. But if you put them first you degrade them; a change passes over them at once. A long row of cyphers means nothing; put a significant digit in front of it, and it means millions. Take away the digit, and it goes back to nothing again. The world, and all its fading sweets, if you put God in the forefront of it, and begin the series with Him, is sweet, though it may be fleeting, and is meant to be felt by us as such. But if you take away Him, it is a row of cyphers signifying nothing, and able to contribute nothing to the real, deepest necessities of the human soul. And so the old question comes-’Why do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?’ It is bread, if only you will remember first that God is the food of your souls. But if you try to nourish yourselves on it alone, then, as I said, a sackful of such ashes will not stay your appetite. Oh! brethren, God has not so blundered in making the world that He has surrounded us with things that are all lies, but He has so made it that whosoever flies in the face of the gracious commandment which is also an invitation, ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,’ has not only no security that the ‘other things’ shall ‘be added unto him,’ but has the certainty that though they were added to him, in degree beyond his dreams and highest hopes, they would avail nothing to satisfy the hunger of his heart. As George Herbert puts it-
‘Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,
Embroidered lies, nothing between two dishes,
These are the pleasures here.’
‘He feedeth on ashes,’ because he does not take God for the food of his soul.
II. So, secondly, notice that a life which thus ignores God is tragically unaware of its own emptiness.
‘A deceived heart hath turned him aside.’ That explains how the man comes to fancy that ashes are food. His whole nature is perverted, his vision distorted, his power of judgment marred. He is given over to hallucinations and illusions and dreams.
That explains, too, why men persist in this feeding on ashes after all experience. There is no fact stranger or more tragical in our histories than that we do not learn by a thousand failures that the world will not avail to make us restful and blessed. You will see a dog chasing a sparrow,-it has chased hundreds before and never caught one. Yet, when the bird rises from the ground, away it goes after it once more, with eager yelp and rush, to renew the old experience. Ah! that is like what a great many of you are doing, and you have not the same excuse that the dog has. You have been trying all your lives-and some of you have grey hairs on your heads-to slake your thirst by dipping leaky buckets into empty wells, and you are at it yet. As some one says, ‘experience throws a light on the wave behind us,’ but it does very little to fling a light on the sea before us. Experience confirms my text, for I venture to put it to the experience of every man-how many moments of complete satisfaction and rest can you summon up in your memory as having been yours in the past? ‘He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase.’ Appetite always grows faster than supply. And so, though we have tried them in vain so often, we turn again to the old discredited sources, and fancy we shall do better this time. Is it not strange? Is there any explanation of it, other than that of my text? ‘A deceived heart hath turned him aside.’
And that deceived heart, stronger than experience, is also stronger than conscience. Do you not know that you ought to be Christians? Do you not know that it is both wrong and foolish of you to ignore God? Do you not know that you will have to answer for it? Have you not had moments of illumination when there has risen up before you the whole vanity of your past lives, and when you have felt ‘I have played the fool, and erred exceedingly’? And yet, what has come of it all with some of you? Why, what comes of it with the drunkard in the Book of Proverbs, who, as soon as he has got over the bruises and the sickness of his last debauch, says, ‘I will seek it yet again.’ ‘A deceived heart hath turned him aside.’
And how is it that this hallucination that you have fed full and been satisfied, when all the while your hunger has not been appeased, can continue to act on us? For the very plain reason that every one of us has in himself a higher and a lower self, a set of desires for the grosser, more earthly, and, using the word in its proper sense, worldly sort-that is to say, directed towards material things, and a higher set which look right up to God if they were allowed fair play. And of these two sets-which really are one at bottom, if a man would only see it-the lower gets the upper hand, and suppresses the higher and the nobler. And so in many a man and woman the longing for God is crushed out by the grosser delights of sense.
One sometimes hears of cowardly, unmanly sailors, who in shipwreck push the women and children aside, and struggle to the boats. And there are in all of us groups of sturdy mendicants, so to speak, who elbow their way to the front, and will have their wants satisfied. What becomes of the gentler group that stand behind, unnoticed and silent? It is an awful thing when men and women do, as so many of us do, pervert the tastes that are meant to lead them to God, in order to stifle the consciousness that they need a God at all. There are tribes of low savages who are known as ‘clay-eaters.’ That is what a great many of us are; we feed upon the serpent’s meat, the dust of the earth, and let all the higher heavenly food, which addresses itself first to loftier desires, but also satisfies these lower ones, stand unnoticed, unsought for, unpartaken of. Dear friends, do not be befooled by that treacherous heart of yours, but let the deepest voices in your soul be heard. Understand, I beseech you, that their cry is for no created person or thing, and that only God Himself can satisfy them.
III. And now, lastly, notice that a life thus ignoring God needs a power from without to set it free.
‘He cannot deliver his soul.’ Can you? Do you think you can break the habits of a lifetime? Do you think that, left to yourself, you would ever have any inclination to break them? Certainly, left to yourselves, you will never have the power. These long indulged appetites of ours grow with indulgence; and that which first was light as a cobweb, and soft as a silken bracelet, becomes heavier and solider until it is an iron fetter upon the limb, which no man can break. There is nothing more awful in life than the influence of habit, so unthinkingly acquired, so inexorably certain, so limiting our possibilities and enclosing us in its grip.
Dear brethren, there is something more wanted than yourselves to break this chain. You have tried, I have no doubt, in the course of your lives, more and more resolutely, to cure yourselves of some more or less unworthy habits. They may be but mere slight tricks of attitude or intonation, or movement. Has your success been such as to encourage you to think that you can revolutionise your lives, and dethrone the despots that have ruled over you in the past? I leave the question to yourselves. To me it seems that the world of men is certain to go on ignoring God, and seeking its delight only in the world of creatures, unless there comes in an outside power into the heart of the world and revolutionises all things.
It is that power that I have to preach, the Christ who is the ‘Bread of God that came down from Heaven,’ who can lift up any soul from the most obstinate and long-continued grovelling amongst the transitory things of this limited world, and the superficial delights of sense and a gratified bodily life; who can bring the forgiveness which is essential, the deliverance from the power of evil which is not less essential, and who can fill our hearts with Himself the food of the world. He comes to each of us; He comes to you, with the old unanswerable question upon His lips, ‘Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?’ It is unanswerable, for you can give no reason sufficient for such madness. All that you could say, and you durst not say it to Him, is, ‘a deceived heart hath turned me aside.’ He comes with the old gracious word upon His lips, ‘Take! eat! this is My body which is broken for you.’ He offers us Himself. He can stay all the hungers of all mankind. He can feed your heart with love, your mind with truth which is Himself, your will with His sweet commands.
As of old He made the thousands sit down upon the grass, and they did all eat and were filled, so He stands before the world to-day and says, ‘I am the Bread of Life; He that cometh to Me shall never hunger.’ And if you will only come to Him-that is to say, will trust yourselves altogether to the merits of His sacrifice, and the might of His indwelling Spirit-He will take away all the taste for the leeks and onions and garlic, and will give you the appetite for heavenly food. He will spread for you a table in the wilderness, and what would else be ashes will become sweet, wholesome, and nourishing. Nor will He cease there, for in His own good time He will call us to the banqueting house above, where He will make us to sit down to meat, and come forth Himself and serve us. Here, hunger often brings pain, and eating is followed by repletion. But there, appetite and satisfaction will produce each other perpetually, and the blessed ones who then hunger will not hunger so as to feel faintness or emptiness, nor be so filled as to cease to desire larger portions of the Bread of God. I beseech you, cry, ‘Lord, ever more give us this bread!’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 It is as if he were eating ashes
It is as if he were eating ashes
Yahweh speaks of a person worshiping an idol as if that person were eating the burned ashes of the wood from which he made the idol. Just as eating ashes does not benefit a person, neither does worshiping an idol. (See: Metaphor)
Read full note →
his deceived heart misleads him
The heart represents the inner person. AT: "he misleads himself because he is deceived" (See: Metonymy)
He cannot rescue himself
"The person who worships idols cannot save himself"
translationWords
deceive
heart
right hand
false god
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.