Isaiah 28:1-13

V. EMANCIPATION NOT FROM EGYPT
Chapter S 28 - 35
A. FOUNDATION THAT IS FIRM, Chapter S 28-29
1. STUPIDITY

TEXT: Isaiah 28:1-13

1

Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with wine!

2

Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, will he cast down to the earth with the hand.

3

The crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden under foot:

4

and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first-ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.

5

In that day will Jehovah of hosts become a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people;

6

and a spirit of justice to him that sitteth in judgment, and strength to them that turn back the battle at the gate.

7

And even these reel with wine, and stagger with strong drink, the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.

8

For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.

9

Whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to understand the message? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts?

10

For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little.

11

Nay, but by men of strange lips and with another tongue will he speak to this people;

12

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.

13

Therefore shall the word of Jehovah 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 be broken, and snared, and taken.

QUERIES

a.

Who is the mighty and strong one the Lord has?

b.

Why are priests and prophets drinking strong drink?

c.

How would God speak to that people by strange lips and other tongues?

PARAPHRASE

Woe to the crowning glory of Israel, the city of Samaria. It is a city of drunkards. Its glory is about to fade into nothing like the withering flowers. She sits as a crowned head of a lush-green valley but her inhabitants have become slaves to wine. Beware! The Lord has an agent, Assyria, mighty and strong, and His agent comes like a devastating hail storm, a destructive storm, and like a roaring flood. His powerful hand is able to cast everything down to the ground. Yes, Samaria, the glorious fortress in which the drunkards of Israel boast is going to be trampled under the foot of this agent of the Lord. I repeat, This city of Samaria which sits at the head of the rich valley is nothing but a rapidly fading flower. In fact, Samaria shall be to the Assyrian like the fig ripe before its time is to the traveller. He will eagerly pick it and immediately devour it. He will not hold it in his hand. When Samaria has fallen, at last the Lord of the Covenant Himself will be the crowning glory of His remnant. To the remnant, He will be beautiful. To the remnant the spirit of justice He restores to the leadership of the nation will be beautiful. He will restore to the remnant the strength, courage and faith to stand against their enemies. But, here in Jerusalem, even its leaders reel and stagger in drunkenness. Priests and prophets, the very shepherds of God's people, men who are to declare God's message, are drunkards. They are alcoholics! They are in such a stupor they cannot understand anything nor make a sensible judgment. They are so depraved and debauched they vomit all over the tables and floors and furniture where they carouse and there is hardly a clean place to be found.
Yet these are the people who are saying, Whom does Isaiah think he is teaching; to whom does he think he is explaining God's revelation? Let him search as widely as he wishes, he will not find any who is in need of such teaching. Is it to babies he thinks he is speaking? Isaiah's teaching is childish. It is nothing but repetitious, command upon command and rule upon rule, and there isn-'t enough of it anywhere to make any sense.
As a matter of fact, God is going to treat the people of Jerusalem like babies and speak a message of chastening to them through a nation whose language they do not understand. God is going to make believers out of these unbelievers by delivering them to the Assyrians. They are too immature and unbelieving to heed Isaiah's teaching, so they will have to be dealt with as immature babies. God repeated over and over His plea to the covenant people to walk in the way of true restobeying His commandmentsbut they would not do so! So, now, they are going to learn through chastening and hardship the will of God is to be obeyed. That revelation of God given through the prophet in command upon command and rule upon rule is going to come to pass and they are going to realize they have stumbled over it when they are broken and trapped and taken captive. That word of God which they mocked is going to mock them!

COMMENTS

Isaiah 28:1-6 DRUNKARDS: Ephraim, as Isaiah uses it here probably represents the northern kingdom of Israel (cf. Isaiah 7:2-17; Hosea 9:3-16). The crown of pride, the fading flower, and the head of the fat valley, all are descriptive synonyms of Samaria, capital city of Israel, which lasted until the bitter end of Israel's subjugation by the Assyrians. The city of Samaria was situated geographically upon a high rise making it the head of a lush-green valley. Omri's intention when he built it was to make it so well fortified it could not be captured. It took the Assyrians three years (723-721 B.C.) to capture it.

This section was probably written in the early years of Hezekiah's reign in Judah when most of Israel had been overrun by the Assyrians and Samaria, the capital, was under siege and would soon fall. There was intense political pressure put upon Hezekiah to make treaties with Assyria and/or with Egypt to keep Judah free from foreign invasion. Isaiah was sent to Hezekiah, and the nation of Judah, with a revelation from God that no alliances should be made with either Assyria or Egypt, but that the nation and its leaders should trust in God for deliverance. This is the thrust of the Chapter s in this section (28-35). Isaiah begins by showing false foundations and the true foundation.
Isaiah intends to remind Judah that Israel's predicament (foreign invasion and destruction) is a consequence of Israel's debauchery. Drunkenness causes ruinindividually and socially. Of course drunkenness is only a symptom of a much more critical problemself-indulgence or permissiveness. This stems from a fundamental rebellion against the word of God called sin! Drunkenness, or any other form of debauchery and self-indulgence is not sicknessit is sin. God created the grape and the juice of the grape and alcohol. All that God created is good. Wine, alcohol, food, clothing, houses and lands can all be perverted, misused and become objects of idolatry. But if used properly, within the will of God and with temperance and self-control, they are blessings from God.
The trouble with the leaders of Israel in its capital city Samaria was that they allowed themselves to be overcome with wine. They were alcoholicsenslaved to wine. They were incapable of making sensible judgments or of leading others to do so. Drunkenness has the effect of completely incapacitating a person both mentally and physically. Alcohol is highly addictive as a depressant. It affects the ability of a human being to make proper moral judgments. Indulged in excessively it causes deterioration of the liver and other vital organs as well as destroying brain cells. When administered in controlled situations, by physicians as medicine, it may have some healing effect. In some situations, mild, diluted alcoholic beverage such as wine may be more physically safe to drink than the water available. This was certainly not the problem in Samaria. It is not the problem in America and the world in general today. The problem is excess, self-indulgence, sindrunkenness. There are approximately 9,000,000 alcoholics in the United States today. That is more than the total population of both kingdoms of the Jews put together in Isaiah's day! Of course people can be obsessed with other things and indulge themselves to the point of idolatry and lose the ability to think properly and function as they shouldgluttony, pride, greed, hate, sexual promiscuity all lead down the same path to ruin.
The Hebrew word translated Lord in Isaiah 28:2 is Adonai and emphasizes sovereignty. The sovereign Lord has an instrument of judgment He is going to use against Ephraim (Israel). This instrument is a mighty and strong one. We take it to mean Assyria. The Assyrians were devastating in their warfare. They took no thought to preserve anything or anybody. Their method was to conquer, kill, loot, burn, destroy. In order to dispense with the necessity to occupy foreign nations they conquered with garrisoned troops, they simply took the conquered people captive back to their own land and imported their own trusted citizens to occupy conquered land. This is what they did to Israel, and the ancestors of the imported Assyrians later became hated half-breeds known as Samaritans in Nehemiah's day. The Assyrian army was aptly described as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, and a tempest of mighty water overflowing. They stormed upon the land and flooded it with destruction. That great fortress city, Samaria, the crown and pride of the once arrogant and rebellious northern kingdom Israel would very soon be trodden under foot of thousands of fierce, pagan Assyrian soldiers. Let Hezekiah and Judah take warning! Assyria is going to gobble-up Samaria like a hungry traveler who sees an early-ripened fig, snatches it from the tree and gobbles it up from the palm of his hand without hardly looking at it.

When Samaria falls there will be a shear, Hebrew for remnant, or that which is left, which will reaffirm its faith and trust in Jehovah. Those few remaining faithful to the Lord, when they see Samaria fall, will reinforce and renew their stand for righteousness, justice and faithfulness. They will take new courage and strength from the Lord's actions and reenter the battle for truth and faith.

So the true foundation is the God of Justice, not self-indulgence or permissiveness. Judah had better know this! So the church of God today must know this!

Isaiah 28:7-13 DEMENTED: Now Isaiah turns his attention to the people of Judah. Even these are swallowed up of wine. It is the theologians who are pointed outpriests and prophets. Priests were to represent man to God and prophets were to represent God to man. The two primary functionaries through which men came into contact with God were, for the most part, drunkards. These religious leaders often times functioned also as advisors to the Hebrew king and his noblemen. Inebriated and intoxicated, completely overcome with drunkenness, they either misrepresented God's will to man or did not represent it at all! Thus the nation was left without religious instruction and leadership at all except for Isaiah and Micah and a few faithful souls known as the remnant! Hebrew religious life was so closely united with its civil structure when religion decayed, civil life became chaotic. Justice and morality dipped to a dangerous low. The drunkards lost their senses and were unable to make sensible, honest judgments. Sin itself is insanity (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:34).

Isaiah paints a vile and repulsive picture of drunkards, but it is a true picture. Distillers of liquor in America often picture users of their product as men of distinction, etc. The truth of the matter may be known by anyone who wants to spend a little time around places where their product is excessively and indulgently consumed. It is a picture of behavior worse than the vilest animal. Vomit, cursing, lewdness, violence, incoherence and delirium is the environment created by drunkenness.
The drunken priests, prophets and other citizens of Judah and Jerusalem manifest their utter depravity by mocking Isaiah's attempts to instruct them in the revelation of God. They say in effect, Who does Isaiah think he is to talk to us like one would talk to children. Are we babies? The Hebrew word translated teach is yarah and means, instruct, inform. The Hebrew word translated message is shemooah which means, something heard or report. This verse (Isaiah 28:9) emphasizes the fact that Isaiah's major ministry was in teaching, instructing the nation concerning the report he had heard (revelation) from God. He evidently spent a great deal of time at teaching. While the nation resented being taught as one would children, that is how they were behaving.

The phrasing of Isaiah 28:10 in the Hebrew is interesting: tsav latsav, tsav latsav, qav laqav, qav laqav. Leupold thinks, it is sarcastic talk, done in monosyllables to make the simplicity of the prophet's message ridiculous. Thus Isaiah is represented as playing the part of the pedantic teacher treating them like stupid children. He doles out his lessons in a repetitious, singsong, rote method. The drunkards are making great sport of Isaiah's sincere attempts to penetrate their wine-addled brains.

The prophet's reply in Isaiah 28:11 is: As a matter of fact, God is going to treat the people of Jerusalem like babies and speak a message of chastening to them through a nation whose language they do not understand. God is going to make believers out of some of these drunken unbelievers by delivering them to the Assyrians. They are too immature and unbelieving to heed Isaiah's instruction, so they will have to be dealt with as immature babies. They will have to be shown! Their minds are too addled. They cannot reasonthey can only understand harsh, punitive action. The Lord himself will speak unwelcome words to them which may also in a way be likened to stammering lips and a foreign tongue. He is going to speak to them in a way they were not accustomed to be spoken to, and probably, in reference to the Assyrians, through a people whose language was foreign to them. The apostle Paul paraphrases Isaiah 28:11 in 1 Corinthians 14:21. Paul uses it, we are convinced, in the same way Isaiah meant it here. The church at Corinth, in its mania for the charisma or gift of tongues (speaking an understandable foreign language unknown to the speaker but miraculously empowered to do so by the Holy Spirit) was acting like a child. The Christians there clamored for this spectacular and showy gift more than they did for prophecy which instructed. Foreign tongues, miraculously uttered, was simply a sign for unbelievers who had to have a demonstration of the supernatural in order to make believers of them. Foreign tongues were not to edify, instruct or reveal anything to believers. The problem of tongues would be to a great extent solved if Bible students would make the connection Paul makes in Corinthians with Isaiah's warning here to Judah. The connection is that the showy, spectacular, manifestation of the supernatural is for the immature and unbelieving. While teaching, instruction, prophecy is for the mature and spiritual.

God had reiterated His invitation again and again through the prophets. Time after time He sent prophets and teachers to guide them to Him wherein they might find rest for their souls (cf. Jeremiah 6:16-21), but they deliberately refused to walk in His restful and refreshing way. The way of rest is in believing and keeping His commandments (cf. Matthew 11:28-30; John 15:1-11, etc.). But to those who are self-indulgent when the way of God is preached, it is to them like babbling (cf. Acts 17:18).

They mocked and scoffed at Isaiah's sincere, untiring, repetitious and simple instruction of God's revelation of Himself. They refused to comprehend that God was about to judge them. But within two generations the revelation given through Isaiah in command upon command is going to come to pass, and they are going to realize they have stumbled at the truth and are trapped by it and taken captive. That which they mocked is going to mock them. God is not mockedwhatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap!

QUIZ

1.

What is the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim?

2.

Why is drunkenness so destructive?

3.

What era of the history of Judah is portrayed here?

4.

What is the attitude of the people of Judah toward Isaiah's teaching?

5.

What is the connection between Isaiah 28:11 and 1 Corinthians 14:21 and tongues?

6.

What is Isaiah's answer to the mockery of the people of Judah?