Isaiah chapter 28

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

WOE TO THE DRUNKARDS OF EPHRAIM AND JUDAH. 

WOE to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim." So Isaiah xxviii. commences ; and the next few chapters have been styled by a commentator, " The book of woes," because of the frequency with which they are opened by similar denunciations. Ephraim was like Judah in apostacy, only in a manner more openly and thoroughly opposed to divine ways. The set policy of the kingdom of the ten tribes was so to corrupt God's laws and institutions, that the house of Judah should no longer have the undivided dominion. And this was "of the Lord," who permits " the crown of pride" and " drunkenness" for a time for His own purposes. Nevertheless, the proud and the drunkards are an abomination to Him and obnoxious to His judgments. And this Isaiah here proclaimed. He had before (ch. viii.) testified of the fall of Ephraim before Assyria; and his contemporary prophet, Hosea, specially pleaded with Ephraim by the Spirit of God which was in him. By implication, a vivid picture of the condition of the Ten Tribes is to be seen in Hosea's prophecy. Baal-worship, and the worship of the calves set up by Jeroboam at Bethel and Dan, was associated with every evil imaginable. The condition of Israel is referred to in the second book of Kings, which tells (ch. xvii.-xviii.) of Shalmanezer's taking of Samaria in the ninth year of the reign of Hezekiah. Shalmanezer appears to be the Lord's " mighty and strong one " of Isaiah's allusion in this place. He cast down the crown of pride, and trod the Ephraimite drunkards under foot. Nebuchadnezzar is called the " mighty one of the heathen " (Ezek. xxxi. 11), into whose hand God gave Pharaoh and Egypt. But he was also God's mighty one, for he is described (Jer. xxvii. 6) as "Nebuchadnezzar . . . my servant." So Shalmanezer was God's servant and mighty one to chastise Israel; just as in aftertimes the Romans were the King's armies, to destroy the murderers of His Son and burn up their city (Matt. xxii. 7). " What manner of time" did the spirit of Christ signify when in verse 5 it said, "In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory" ? The day of the Lord doubtless. But what had that to do with Ephraim, now threatened and shortly to be " trodden under foot" ? The answer is, that though cast off for many centuries, Ephraim at last should be regathered and united with Judah in the land. And that there was even then a "residue" who, in that day of the Lord, should inherit the " fat valleys" of Ephraim for ever. Joshua was an Ephraimite who slept there in dust, while later generations of his tribesmen, forgetting his example, went astray after other gods. Elijah's " seven thousand" remnant were other portions of the " residue," who slept likewise, while Elijah was (and is) honoured with exemption from death. These will be elements in Yahweh's " crown of glory" and "diadem of beauty" in the land in the day of Christ, when he who wandered tired, hungry, and thirsty by Jacob's well will be in the land again in " the restitution of all things." Crowns of pride and drunkenness are but for a moment, but Yahweh's crown of glory is for ever (Zech. ix. 16; 1 Thess. ii. 19-20). The drunkenness rebuked by the prophet would be spiritual as well as literal. The two have always gone together in the history of religious declensions, and both are evident! y rebuked by the prophets. " Woe to them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night until wine inflame them. And the harp and the viol, the tabret and pipe and wine are in their feasts; but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operations of his hands" (Isa. v. 11). Here literal drunkenness is a factor which contributed potently to precipitate the people into "hell's mouth," as it does this day. Many other denunciations could be quoted. On the other hand, the prophet says of the inhabitants of Jerusalem (ch. xxix. 9), " They are drunken, hut not with wine; they stagger, hut not with strong drink;" pointing here to an inebriation with false doctrine that is quite compatible with total abstinence from alcoholic liquors. " Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken; the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad" (Jer. li. 7). This " wine" was the Babylonian idolatry, the source of what was long afterwards described as " the wine of her fornication," with reference to another " Babylon" that has " made the inhabitants of the earth drunk," and, like her prototype, " deceived all nations." In Isaiah's day Ephraim was corrupted by the importation of the Euphratean Babylonian religion (2 Kings xvii.), and now Jew and Gentile are alike corrupted by a modern variation of the same thing emanating from Rome. This is susceptible of very extensive and complete demonstration. Hislop's Two Bahylons does much in that direction. In verse 7, the prophet appears to turn from Ephraim to Judah, saying, " But they also have erred through wine." At any rate, in verse 14, we find him speaking to the rulers of Jerusalem. They also " erred in vision and stumbled in judgment." They had the law, but despised the word, corrupting it with traditions like a later generation that resisted the Lord Jesus. In such a state of affairs the Spirit said : " Whom shall he teach knowledge ? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine ?" And the answer given is: " Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts." This is made the subject of an enlightening allusion by Paul in the epistle to the Hebrews (ch. v.), where he rebukes some who, by reason of their long connection with the truth, ought to have been teachers; adding that they themselves had need to be taught again the first principles of the oracles of God. " Ye are become," says he, " such as have need of milk, and not of strpjig meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." And he goes on to exhort them to leave first principles behind and go on unto perfection. So, then, the " weaned" are men of exercised senses in the word of righteousness, of whom Isaiah and Paul are examples, whose " exercises" were supplemented by gift of the Holy Spirit. If this be so, how can unexercised persons expect to understand doctrine and be taught of God ? If they elect to exercise their senses only on some inferior gifts of God to the exclusion of the word of righteousness, what reasonable complaint can be made against Him that He allows them to pass away for ever with the things they so transiently enjoy? And, again, if people will not exercise their senses on the word, how can the servants of God do anything towards teaching them, seeing God Himself restricts knowledge and understanding to the " exercised " seekers after Him. It was to this class that the ministry of the prophets potently appealed—and appeals, to this day. But the un weaned of Isaiah's day were not without professional zeal for the law, like their modern representatives. Only they played with it and nullified it—not, perhaps, after the type of modern sermonizings, that is a later development-—but with "traditions" such as Christ rebuked, and "Jewish fables and endless genealogies," such as Paul referred to. To these and their successors of after generations, a constant iteration of first principles was to no profit. " For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line ; here a little, there a little. Nay, but by men of strange lips and with another tongue will he speak to this people: to whom he said, This is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary ; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. Therefore shall the word of the Lord be unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little; that they may go and fall backward, and he broken, and snared, and taken" (R.V.). It is usual to apply this passage to a justification of the gradual instruction of the young in God's ways. But, although that instruction is altogether excellent and indispensable, it is not the subject of the prophetic word in this place. What we have here is the rebuke of people who were " babes" when they ought no longer to have been such, or, worse still, of people who would not hear, despite miraculous intervention, and to whom, therefore, the word of the Lord was " precept upon precept" only to their destruction. Paul quotes the eleventh verse of the chapter when rebuking the Corinthians (1 Cor. xiv.) for their abuse of the gift of tongues. The solemn lesson of the passage is that men may be in close and familiar contact with the word of the Lord, and yet find it only to their destruction if they will not hear (or obey) it. " We are," said Paul, " unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are being saved, and in them that perish. To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life." There were men in his day " ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth"—men "desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding not what they say, nor whereof they affirm." They were an affliction to him till the day of his death. To a man like Paul, nothing could be more distressing than an unfaithful handling of the Word of God. The " scornful men " who ruled Jerusalem were represented by Isaiah as declaring that they had made a covenant with death and an agreement with the grave, and that they would escape the " overflowing scourge" threatened by C*od, by means of their " refuge of lies." " Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place." The stone is Christ (Psa. cxviii. 22; Matt. xxi. 42 ; Acts iv. 11; Eph. ii. 20; &c). In a sense the stone has been laid in Zion, and in a sense it has not. " Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. iii. 11). The name of Jesus Christ was revealed in Zion in the first century as the only name of salvation; and judgment and an overflowing scourge followed Zion's rejection of it. But though he rose from the dead, he did not further prosecute his claim to Jewish and universal sovereignty, but ascended into heaven, whence, as from " a far country," he is to return to be enthroned in Zion and to make his foes his footstool. The tried and precious stone has, therefore, yet to be laid in Zion, with judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet ; and the refuge of lies which still obtains in Jerusalem and all tbe earth is to be swept away, and the "spiritual house" of which Peter and Paul speak (1 Pet. ii. 5 ; Eph. ii. 20) is to be manifested in Zion to the #lory of God. It was a great annulling of Israel's "covenant with death," when the escape from death was shown to be in the way they deliberately rejected. When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, what became of their saying, " Give God the praise, we know that this man is a sinner" ? And when he sent the Romans upon them as an "overflowing scourge," where was their means of escape ? There was none, and they perished under it. " Perasim " was the place where God broke forth upon David's enemies " as the breach of waters," using David as His instrument (2 Sam. v.) ; and was, therefore, a fitting reference to the time when He broke forth in the waters of the Roman " flood " upon the enemies of the Son of David. And " Gibeon" was where the Lord fought for Joshua, and by Joshua against His enemies; and was likewise, therefore, a fitting symbol of God's fighting by Jesus against His enemies. It is not suggested that the scope of this prophecy is restricted to the Roman overthrow, but rather that, since that was consequent on Jerusalem's filling up the cup of her iniquity, it is the most prominent catastrophe in the prophet's line of vision. This fighting against Jerusalem is referred to by God as " His strange work"—"His strange act." God is good; He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Nothing could exceed the kindness and emphasis with which this is declared by the prophet Ezekiel (ch. xviii.). And when the Father was manifested in Jerusalem in human form divine in the person of His beloved Son, he even wept over the city (Luke xix. 41) as he pronounced judgment against her because she " knew not the time of her visitation." It was a " strange work," the siege of Jerusalem, and the giving over to death of hundreds of thousands of " the children of the kingdom." It is not the last " strange work " to come upon earth. What will be thought when Christendom's turn comes, which it will. It would seem strange, indeed, to many, that God should destroy a system upon which the name of Christ is called, and a city in which a High Priest poses as the chief representative of Christ on earth—Rome and " His Holiness" the Pope (Rev. xvii. 18, 14). But it will not seem strange to the friends of Christ who remember Jerusalem's fate. Apart from the judgments written, the name of God would be erased from the earth, which, however, He has declared shall not be. A somewhat obscure parable (verses 23-29) concludes this chapter of rebuke against the mockers and scornful men who would not hear, though in the presence of constantly-recurring precepts and rules of the Word of God. They appear to be likened to a plowman who ploughed all day and broke clods, but did not give a thought to sowing. The exhortation of Hos. x. 12 is " Sow to yourselves in righteousness; reap in mercy." Compare also Christ's parable of the sower and Paul's allusion to ploughing in hope and sowing spiritual things (1 Cor. ix. 10). A wise husbandman gave thought to the sowing, and when harvest time came, did not blunder in his treatment of the various plants. Cummin is a small plant whose seeds are used as we use carraway seeds. Fitches are vetches. " So small and tender a seed (as cummin) would be destroyed or crushed if threshed like corn, or even if beaten with a staff like the stouter husks and the fitches. The same mode of beating out the cummin is still practised, while the corn is TRODDEN out by the oxen " (Smith's Diet). "The good seed are the children of the kingdom," but the " wicked husbandmen," though punctilious about the tithing of " mint and anise and cummin," passed over the weighter matters of the law, and were quite unscrupulous in their treatment of the " good seed." Jesus is the " true bread," who was " bruised for our iniquities"; and the apostles shared his experience in less degree. " Thrice was I beaten with rods," says Paul ; and the Acts of the Apostles shows us the others in like suffering. But the "bruising," "threshing," and "breaking" in which the " wicked husbandmen" were but God's instruments, was not to be for ever. The fruit would endure in eternal life when they would be dead and forgotten. This appears to be the meaning of the enigmatical words to which Isaiah so emphatically called attention (v. 23), and of which he said in conclusion : " This also cometh forth from the Lord οι Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working."