Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Isaiah 5:11-17
The Second Woe (Isaiah 5:11).
‘Woe to those who rise up early in the morning,
That they may follow strong drink,
Who tarry late into the night,
Until wine inflames them.
And the harp, and the lute, the tabret and the pipe,
And wine are in their feasts.
But they do not regard the work of Yahweh,
Nor have they considered the operation of His hands.'
The first woe was against greed and avarice, the second is against over excess in pleasure seeking. It was one of the dangers, especially of those in high positions, that they could leave their responsibilities to others while they indulged themselves. These drank day and night and spent their time in no doubt ribald and sensual musical entertainment (compare Isaiah 22:13; Isaiah 28:1; Isaiah 28:8; Hosea 7:5; Amos 6:5). Overindulgence in music and dancing can be as intoxicating as overindulgence in drink.
These were men who could have made a great difference in society, but instead they were saturated with fleshly indulgence. Their whole thoughts were on pleasure, and, in contrast, they did not take regard to the work of Yahweh, which should have been their main aim and responsibility. They were too taken up with themselves and their delights. Many today are similar. All thoughts of God and His requirements are dismissed by indulgence in music, drink, sport and drugs.
‘They do not regard the work of Yahweh, nor have they considered the operation of His hands.' God and His ways are dismissed. For the ‘work (po‘al) of Yahweh' see Deuteronomy 32:4 where the stress is on His faithful and righteous judicial work; Job 36:24 where the stress is on his general government of the universe; Psalms 44:1 where the stress is on His delivering power; Psalms 64:9 where the stress is on His judgments. Thus these men do not take note of what He has done, and what He is doing, because they are saturated with music and wine and pleasure.
The ‘operation (work - ma‘aseh) of His hands' can describe His work of judgment (Isaiah 10:12; Isaiah 29:3); His miraculous works (Exodus 34:10); His work of creation (Psalms 8:3; Psalms 8:6; Psalms 19:1); and His overruling of creation (Psalms 92:4). Thus these men ignore His activity in the world. They are too pleasure ridden to consider it, or even notice it, and thus fail to fulfil God's demands. But the consequences of this will soon come on them.
‘Therefore my people are gone into captivity,
For lack of knowledge,
And their honourable men are famished,
And their multitude are parched with thirst.
Therefore Sheol has enlarged her appetite,
And opened her mouth without measure,
And their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, descend into it,
And he who rejoices among them.
And the mean man is bowed down, and the great man is humbled,
And the eyes of the lofty are humbled.'
And because these men and their compatriots had failed to ‘know' God Israel would suffer (or had suffered). They would find themselves captive, whether in exile or in their own land, subjected to the authority of outsiders.
It is constantly important to recognise that Hebrew only has two tenses, (although seven conjugations) the direct and indirect, the complete and incomplete. They were more concerned with the completeness and incompleteness of actions than with chronology. Thus the use of the perfect tense does not always depict past action, but rather action seen as completed whether past or future.
Here it may simply be a way of expressing the completeness and certainty of what God would do in the future, (often erroneously called ‘the prophetic perfect') rather than indicating that it was in the past. It is saying that it is a certain and sure judgment that either has or will assuredly soon come on them in devastating completeness. Alternatively it may be seen as a comment added later by the prophet declaring the fulfilment of God's verdict on their behaviour. But however we see it, it is depicting the consequence of their behaviour.
So through their ‘lack of knowledge' of God, because they had failed to know and observe His ways, they are or were destined for captivity. And Israel, the northern kingdom, would indeed go into captivity and exile in 722 BC, even while Isaiah was still alive, their honourable men and their people chained and pleading for food and water. And Judah also would be invaded and made desolate, with captivity and exile for them also a certain but more distant prospect, unless they repented. Then would the pleasure ridden leaders, and the pleasure ridden people, instead of being able to overindulge themselves, be famished and thirst-ridden, and all because they had failed to know Yahweh and acknowledge and trust Him.
But worse. The grave would open its mouth to them in its own great thirst, a mouth gaping and wide open, and it would swallow up huge numbers of them. And into it would go their glory, and their pomp, and those who ‘rejoiced' and behaved hilariously in their wild parties and excesses. ‘Their glory' may indicate their important men in their grandeur and splendour, or the whole of what they gloried in, including paradoxically their glorying in the cult of Yahweh (contrast Isaiah 4:2).
Note how the punishment is made to fit the crime. Because they overindulged their ‘thirst', they themselves would thirst, and a thirsty grave will swallow them. What men sow they will reap. We may not fear captivity in our day, but the grave awaits us all.
‘And the mean man is bowed down, and the great man is humbled, and the eyes of the lofty are humbled.' The result will be total humiliation for all, both poor and wealthy, both insignificant and grand, and even for the royal house itself. Men lowered their eyes before the great, but even those who are so lofty that they do not need to lower the eyes will find that they are made to do so by what will come on them.
‘Sheol' - the unseen shadowy world of the dead, unknown and unknowable. The grave and what lay beyond it. It was seen as a land of shadows, of grave-like creatures, where there is no joy or reality. There was then no concept of a satisfying afterlife.
‘But Yahweh of hosts is exalted in judgment,
And God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness.
Then shall the lambs feed as in their pasture,
And the waste places of the fat ones will wanderers eat.'
In contrast with the humbling of rebellious man will be the exaltation of Yahweh. His righteous acts and judgments will result in the exaltation of His name, and all creation will declare the rightness of what He has done. He will be revealed as ‘the Holy One', the ‘Set Apart One', set apart by His righteousness. The word ‘holy' means that which has been set apart for a sacred purpose (so paradoxically the cult prostitutes were called ‘holy ones' by those who followed the cult) thus God as the Holy One is the One essentially set apart in His uniqueness. And that uniqueness is here declared to consist in His total righteousness, His total moral purity, rightness, and goodness. He is the essence of all that is right, and true, and wholesome, and good.
The words that follow may be seen in various ways. Either as wholly depicting the glorious future of His own when He achieves His final triumph, and also welcomes ‘strangers'. Or as a total picture of the final desert of the rebellious. Or as a contrast the one with the other.
In the first interpretation it is saying that so great will be the prosperity of His people that not only will they feed in their own pasture, in what God has given them, and grow fat in the best sense (compare Micah 2:12; Jeremiah 31:10), but there will be so much to spare that aliens and wanderers will be able to feast on it too. There was certainly a literal fulfilment of this in the shorter term in periods during the pre-Christian period when Israel comparatively greatly prospered, and even moreso spiritually in the days of the early church, but its greater, more figurative, fulfilment awaits that day when we feast with Him before the throne (John 14:2; Revelation 7:16).
Alternately the thought may be that all that once belonged to those wealthy, condemned Israelites, will from this time on merely be pasture for lambs, who will be able to wander anywhere and graze among the ruins of what is left, while aliens and strangers will feed in the waste places which were once their prosperous estates. It could thus be depicting that they have lost everything.
Or it may be that we are to see the reference to the lambs as referring to the blessing on the remnant, while the second part of the verse refers to the judgment on the rebellious as bringing blessing to ‘strangers' because the land becomes available to tramps. In view of the fact that Scripture regularly depicts God's own true people as sheep or lambs this may seem the most probable interpretation. Out of the devastations of judgment will come blessing for the righteous, who will feast on God's pasture, while what the rebellious gloried in will become a waste place, but God will then turn this to the benefit of aliens who will gain from what the rebellious have lost. Thus will come triumph out of disaster.