Isaiah 28:1-13

A Denunciation of Drunkenness

Isa 28:1-13

The prophet here denounces the drunkards of Ephraim. It has been well said that there is a "dry drunkenness." Men are drunk, but not with wine; sometimes they are drunk with prosperity, with vanity, with evil thoughts, passionate desires. Men may be sober, and yet may be drunk. Men may be total abstainers from wine, and may yet go straight down to hell. This ought to be very clearly understood. Some annotators have thought that reference is here made to this dry drunkenness. There is no need to avail ourselves of this interpretation; it is painfully evident that everything that is here said as against the princes of Ephraim belongs by all rights to the devil of literal drunkenness. The prophet himself is inflamed into a new intensity of feeling as he considers what has become of Ephraim, who never gave joy to any living soul. What man has a good word to say for Ephraim? It is a branded name. But the prophet cannot keep his prophecy within the old lines of Judah and Jerusalem, when he thinks of what is being done in the northern metropolis; he hears that the princes of that northern capital are drunk, and he pronounces woe from the very altar of heaven against the princes who are reeling through strong drink. There are moral rights, as well as geographical. Men may not on all occasions keep their denunciations to their own localities. Sometimes we are so affected by the depth, intensity, infamy of evil, that we feel within ourselves the right to denounce it, though it be done at the antipodes, and though the men who are doing it speak a language we cannot understand. Humanity overcomes locality. It will be a sad day when the prophets keep themselves within their own lines parochial, metropolitan, imperial. Prophets ought to have no lines within which to minister their divine functions; they ought to make their voices heard wherever there is wrong to be denounced, wherever there is helplessness to be assisted. It is thus that the Lord enlarges the prophet himself, and often causes good to come out of evil. Life is an infinite complication. Were it so simple as some represent it to be, life would lose not only its mystery but its charm. Life needs its apocalypse as well as its alphabet.

How sad a thing that a glorious crown should ever come to be like a fading flower! "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." There is no genius that may not become an idiot. There is no son of the morning that may not quench his torch in the deepest degradation. God cares nothing for our crowns of glory, our high titles, our boasted pedigrees, our cloudy ancestries. He cares for character. His throne is built upon righteousness, and his criticism is conducted with reference to equity: what are the people morally, what are their prayers, what are their desires, what are their dispositions, what is their spiritual tone? Their poverty cannot hinder God's benediction, their obscurity shall be lighted with the candle of the Lord, and their prayers shall make the heavens bright because of the great answers which are sent down to the cry of the contrite heart.

The crown of Ephraim has become as a fading flower: then is all over in human history? When man fails, God seems to expand upon the vision of the universe with a new amplitude, and to glow with a new and unimagined splendour:

"In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people" ( Isa 28:5 ).

When the Lord reigns he shall be

"For a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate" ( Isa 28:6 ).

Gladly would we omit the detail, but it is written here with a specific minuteness which conveys the impression that it was meant to be read, syllabled out slowly, solemnly

"But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment" ( Isa 28:7 ).

Observe how the word "erred" occurs three times in this indictment. It is not the best word in the sense of most fully expressing the prophet's meaning. A better word is "reeled": "but they also have reeled through wine the priest and the prophet have reeled through strong drink they reel in vision." The picture is a vivid one, painful in its graphic clearness. We speak with some degree of horror of any man being drunk if there be those who can laugh at a reeling drunkard, they know not what drunkenness is but when it is a prophet who reels, a priest who staggers, a man of prayer who is blind through drink, then we say: How are the mighty fallen! Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth: when the righteous fail, what shall other men do? Howl, fir-tree; for the cedar is fallen.

"They are swallowed up of wine." This is how all debasement continues, aggravates itself, and brings itself to shameful issue. No man begins at the point of being swallowed up in any evil: he approaches it almost stealthily, he touches it experimentally, he retains for a certain time his self-control in relation to it, he will handle it, but easily, so that he can set it down again, should it so please him. But at the end there is swallowing up, destruction death is in the cup, and death must be drunk up by those who put their lips to the forbidden vessel. When Edward IV. condemned his own brother, George Duke of Clarence, to be killed, we are told that the duke desired to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey, and the historian well adds, "as became so stout a drunkard." To this end may men come who never dreamed of coming to it, who meant to show the world how easy it would be to toy with the devil, to touch him, set him back, smile at him, laugh at him, use him as a dog, bind him as a slave; and to all these initial usages will the devil submit himself, knowing that at some fatal unsuspected moment he will lasso the man who supposes he can take him captive, and he will carry him away to the chambers of death.

Nor did the matter end there. Drunken men have a speech of their own. There is a bad language of intoxication:

"Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little" ( Isa 28:9-10 ).

But what came to the men who mocked their prophets? Mark how consistent is the divine retribution. We have heard of bears coming out of the wood and destroying those who mocked Elisha; what saith the Scripture at this point?

"For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people" ( Isa 28:11 ).

"To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear" ( Isa 28:12 ).

"But the word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little" ( Isa 28:13 ).

Prayer

Almighty God, we bless thee for Jesus Christ thy Son, the gift of thy love, the seal of thy grace. He is fairest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely; his face was indeed marred more than any man's, yet through all the scar there shone a light not of earth. We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The bruising could not disguise him; every wound he bore was but a new point of glory yet to shine. We gather around his Cross, and behold the amazing spectacle. Our hearts tremble within us because we know who wrought this deed of woe; our sin crucified the Son of God. There is none righteous; no, not one. We know who drove the nail, who thrust the spear, who plaited the crown of thorns, and pressed it on the temples of innocence; we take shame to ourselves. It is not historical, but personal; it did not occur long ago only, it occurs this day. God forgive us; God be merciful unto us sinners, and enable us to know that through all this mystery of suffering thou art bringing the eternal heaven of holiness and rest and perfectness. We do not end at the Cross; yea, at the Cross we do but begin; what thou shalt reveal, who can tell? what fancy can forecast? Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor can imagination suppose, what is yet to come. Thou wilt show the meaning of it all; the light shall be more than the darkness, the earth shall yield the root, but all heaven shall be too small for the blossom and the fruit. Enable men to flock to Christ, to run to him, to flee as one might flee to a city of refuge who had been guilty of bloodshed. Thus may we live in Christ, and live for Christ, that we may be Christ's at his coming. Amen.