Isaiah 56:9-12

3. DUMB DOGS DENOUNCED

TEXT: Isaiah 56:9-12

9

All ye beasts of the field, come to devour, yea, all ye beasts in the forest.

10

His watchmen are blind, they are all without knowledge; they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber.

11

Yea, the dogs are greedy, they can never have enough; and these are shepherds that cannot understand: they all turned to their own way, each one to his gain, from every quarter.

12

Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow shall be as this day, a day great beyond measure.

QUERIES

a.

Who are the dumb dogs?

b.

Were the shepherds of Israel actually drunkards?

PARAPHRASE

Come like wild beasts, all you pagan nations, and devour this helpless people of Mine, says Jehovah. The watchmen of this people are blind to unbelief and covenant-breaking which is crippling them. The men who are supposed to be spiritual leaders of My people are like stupified dogs; they should be barking the alarm, but they do not because they have sated themselves with self-indulgence so they lie around lazily sleeping and dreaming. These so-called spiritual leaders are like greedy dogs that never get enough. They are like shepherds who cannot seem to understand that an enemy is about to attack their flock because they are completely engrossed in their own selfish pursuits of making money and they are oblivious to the needs of the flock. Not only are they profligates themselves, but they are busy trying to seduce others into their debauchery. They are advocating deliberate drunkenness in order to blot out any concern or responsibility for the spiritual problems facing Israel.

COMMENTS

Isaiah 56:9 DESTRUCTION: This section (Isaiah 56:9-12) connects to the main topic under considerationCovenant Relationship. This section focuses on the major reason Isaiah was having such a difficult time getting the majority of his countrymen to renew their messianic relationship with Jehovah. The spiritual leaders were corrupt. Because the nation of Israel had defaulted on its theocratic uniqueness, by dividing into two warring nations (Israel and Judah) and by assimilating idolatry, God was letting her suffer the due penalty of her error in her own body-politic. She tried to deceive pagan empires with treaties and alliances, pitting one against another. Israel exchanged her covenant relationship with the omnipotent Jehovah for vain and destructive covenants with God-opposing nations. Now those empires are poised to wreak destruction upon her (cf. Jeremiah 12:9; Ezekiel 34:5; Ezekiel 34:8). The figure of speech under which Isaiah here delineates the nations which were enemies of God's people is beasts and is used elsewhere in Scripture for the same identification (cf. our comments, Daniel, College Press, pgs. 259-260; see also Revelation 13:1 ff where Rome is symbolized as beasts).

Isaiah 56:10-12 DRUNKENNESS: The watchmen (spiritual leaders such as priests and judges) of Israel were blind. Isaiah refers to spiritual blindness which is a deliberate blindness; a blindness of the heart by choice. The spiritual leaders of Israel refused to acknowledge the dangers that were everywhere apparent to men of faith like Isaiah. Micah, (Micah 1:5) a prophet-contemporary of Isaiah, put his finger on the root cause of the sin of both Israel and Judah when he pointed to the capital cities of both nations as the place where corruption began and was at its worst. When the political and spiritual leadership of a nation is decadent, it does not take long for corruption to filter down into the entire fibre of the whole nation at grass-roots levels. Those who would aspire to positions of such leadership have a responsibility beyond their own personal livesthey have a responsibility to those who look to them for leadership in character as well as function.

Isaiah calls the leaders dogs! Dogs are mentioned about 40 times in the scriptures. They were not the friendly, domesticated dogs we know in the Western world today. They were half-wild, with some mixture of jackal or wolf, thin from want of food and ill-natured, which roamed the streets or sometimes traveled with the nomadic shepherds of Palestine, (cf. Job 30:1, etc.). The apostle Paul uses dogs to symbolize the vicious Judaizers who were always trying to attack him and the church (cf. Philippians 3:2 ff). Here, however, the dogs have lost their alertness and activeness because they have sated themselves on self-indulgence. They are mute! They just cannot get up the energy to bark. They really do not care to bark. No warning will come from these critters Every farm-boy has seen an illustration of this in the old hound who has filled himself with food and has gone off to lie down in the shade of a tree, hardly opening an eye when someone approacheshe just doesn-'t care. The whole picture is one of devotion to self-enjoyment and satisfaction and neglect of duty.

These dogs (leaders of the nation) are greedy gluttons. They are never satisfied. They must always have more. They are interested only in their own gain. Nothing will bring the downfall of a nation more rapidly than selfish hedonism in its leadership. When public servants serve only themselves, they set the same moral tone for the whole populace. The leaders of Israel prayed upon the flock (cf. Ezekiel 34:1-10). They exploited and abused their constituents until the whole nation was sapped of its economic and moral fibre. Then the nation collapsed without the will to reform its morals, resist its enemies or return to the Lord. These leaders encouraged one another and the whole nation to drunkenness, (cf. Isaiah 5:11; Isaiah 5:22; Isaiah 24:9 to Isaiah 28:7; Isaiah 29:9; Isaiah 24:20; Isaiah 51:21; Micah 2:11; etc.) Rather than face the reality of the consequences of their careless indulgence, they advocate an alcoholic stupefication that will anesthetize their reasoning ability. Thus they will create for themselves a fool's paradise, saying, ... tomorrow shall be as this day, great beyond measure.

QUIZ

1.

How does this text connect to the previous discussion of Covenant Relationship?

2.

Why does Isaiah use beasts to refer to pagan nations?

3.

Why is it so dangerous for a nation's leadership to become drunkards?

4.

Why is the word dogs so appropriate for the leaders of Isaiah's day?

5.

Why the encouragement by the leaders for all the people to become drunkards?