Isaiah 28:1-3 - Homiletics

The drunkards of Ephraim.

While Scripture, from first to last, upholds the moderate use of wine as cheering and "making glad the heart of man," it is distinct and severe in its denunciations of drunkenness and unrestrained revelry. The son who was "stubborn and rebellious, a glutton and a drunkard," was to be brought by his parents before the ciders under the Jewish Law, and "stoned with stones that he might die" ( Deuteronomy 21:20 , Deuteronomy 21:21 ). Nabal's drunkenness and churlishness together caused him to be "smitten by the Lord that he died' ( 1 Samuel 25:38 ). Solomon warns his son against drunkenness by reminding him of the fact, which experience had sufficiently proved by his time, that "the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty" ( Proverbs 23:21 ). The "drunkards of Ephraim" are denounced in unsparing terms by Isaiah and Amos. Christians are taught that drunkards "shall not inherit the kingdom of God" ( 1 Corinthians 6:10 ), and bidden, "If any man that is called a brother be a drunkard, with such a one, no, not to eat" ( 1 Corinthians 5:11 ). Drunkenness and gluttony are naturally coupled together, as being each of them an abuse of God's good gifts to man; but drunkenness is far the worse of the two, since, by robbing man of his self-control, it is apt to lead him on to a number of other sins and crimes, and thus, while not perhaps worse in itself, it is in its consequences far more injurious than gluttony. Drunkenness is often pleaded as an excuse for the crimes whereto it leads; but some of the wisest amongst ancient legislators were so far from accepting this plea, that they doubled the penalty for an offence if a man was drunk when he committed it (Arist; 'Eth. Nic.,' Amos 3:5 , § 8). In the case of the "drunkards of Ephraim," it may be suspected that the desire to drown their cares in wine was at the root of their drunkenness (comp. Isaiah 22:13 ; Proverbs 31:6 , Proverbs 31:7 ). But, however we may pity those who so act, we cannot excuse them. Difficulties are a call upon us to use to the utmost the intellect wherewith we are endowed by God, if so be we may anyhow devise an escape from our troubles—not a reason for our pushing reason from its seat, and rushing blindfold on calamity.