v. 20. _Woe unto them that call evil good, &c._
If the judgments of men are habitually influenced by their
affections, it is not surprising that their speech should bear the
impress of the same controlling power. What we hear men say in the
way of passing judgment upon things and persons, unless said
deliberately for the purpose of description, will afford us, for the
most part, a correct idea of their dispositions and prevailing
inclinations. There is, indeed, a customary mode of talking in which
familiar formulas of praise and censure as to moral objects are
employed as if by rote; but this dialect, however near it may
approach to that of evangelical morality, is still distinguished from
it by indubitable marks. One who thus indulges in the use of such
expressions as imply a recognition of the principles of Biblical
morality, but whose conduct repudiates them, in expressing his
opinions on moral subjects avoids, as if instinctively, the terms of
censure and of approbation which belong to Scripture. He will speak
of an act or a course of acts as wrong, perhaps as vicious,--it may
even be as wicked, but not as _sinful._ There are crimes and vices,
but no sins in his vocabulary. Vice and sin are referable, it would
seem, to an abstract and perhaps variable standard, while sin brings
into view the legislative and judicial character of God. Two men
shall converse together upon truth and falsehood, employing the
_same_ words and phrases; and yet when you come to ascertain the
sense in which they severally use the same language, you shall find
that while the one adopts the rigorous and simple rule of truth and
falsehood laid down in the Bible and by common sense, the other holds
it with so many qualifications and exceptions as almost to render it
a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance. But who does
not know that men are often worse in the bent of their affections
than in the general drift of their discourse? If we err, therefore,
in the application of the test proposed, we are far more apt to err
in favour of the subject than against him. He who is invariably
prompted, when there is no counteracting influence, to call evil good
and good evil, is one who, like the fallen angel, says in his heart,
"Evil, be thou my good!" and is, therefore, a just subject of the woe
denounced by the prophet in the text.
+I. The expression is descriptive of those who hate good and love
evil--not of those who err as to what is good and what is evil.+ A
rational nature is incapable of loving evil, simply viewed as evil,
or of hating good when simply viewed as good. Whatever thing you
love, you thereby recognise as good; and what you hate or abhor, you
thereby recognise as evil. No man can dislike a taste, or smell, or
sound which at the same time he regards as pleasant, nor can he like
one which he thinks unpleasant. But change the standard of
comparison, and what appeared impossible is realised. The music which
is sweetest to your ear may be offensive when it breaks the slumber
of your sleeping friend; the harshest voice may charm you when it
announces that your friend still lives. The darling sin is hated by
the sinner as the means of his damnation, though he loves it as the
source of present pleasure. When, therefore, men profess to look upon
that as excellent which in their hearts and lives they treat as
hateful, and to regard as evil and abominable that which they are
seeking after and which they delight in, they are not expressing
their own feelings, but assenting to the judgment of others. And if
they are really so far enlightened as to think sincerely that the
objects of their passionate attachment are evil, this is only
admitting that their own affections are disordered and at variance
with reason. It is as if a man's sense of taste should be so vitiated
through disease, that what is sweet to others is to him a pungent
bitter. So the sinner may believe, on God's authority or man's, that
sin is evil and holiness is good, but his diseased eye will still
confound light with darkness, and his lips, whenever they express the
feelings of his heart, will continue to call good evil and evil good.
The three forms of expression in the text appear to be significant of
one and the same thing. The thought is clothed first in literal and
then in metaphorical expressions. The character thus drawn is
generally applicable to ungodly men. If the verse be taken merely in
this general sense, the woe which it pronounces is a general woe, or
declaration of Divine displeasure and denunciation of impending wrath
against the wicked generally, simply equivalent to that in chap.
iii. 11.
Such a declaration, awful as it is, would furnish no specific test of
character, because it would still leave the question undecided who it
is that chooses evil and rejects good. But the prophet is very far
from meaning merely to assert the general liability of sinners to the
wrath of God. In view of the context, then, consider--
+II. An enumeration of particular offences then especially
prevailing.+ The text is the fourth in a series of six woes denounced
upon as many outward manifestations of corrupt affection then
especially prevalent, but by no means limited to that age or country;
and these are set forth, not as the product of so many evil
principles, but as the varied exhibition of that universal and
profound corruption which he had just asserted to exist in general
terms. 1. _The avaricious and ambitious grasping after great
possessions, not merely as a means of luxurious indulgence, but as a
distinction and a gratification of pride_ (ver. 8). To such the
prophet threatened woe (ver. 9), and to such the Apostle James also
(James v. 4). 2. _Drunkenness_ (ver. 11). Here also the description
of the vice is followed by its punishment, including not only
personal but national calamities, as war, desolation, and captivity.
3. _Presumption and blasphemy_ (vers. 18, 19). 4. _Moral perversity,_
as set forth in the text. 5. _Overweening confidence in human reason
as opposed to God's unerring revelation_ (ver. 21). 6. _Drunkenness,
considered,_ not as in the former case, as a personal excess,
producing inconsideration and neglect of God, but _as a vice of
magistrates and rulers, and as leading to oppression and all
practical injustice_ (vers. 22, 23).
This view of the context is given for two reasons--1. To show that in
this whole passage the prophet refers to species of iniquity familiar
to our own time and country; and 2. Chiefly to show that we have in
the text the description of a certain outward form in which the
prevailing wickedness betrayed itself. An outward mark of those who
hate God and whom He designs to punish is their confounding moral
distinctions in their conversation. Consider, then--
+III. How moral distinctions are confounded.+ When one admits in
words the great first principles in morals, yet takes away so much as
to obliterate the practical distinction between right and wrong,
truth and falsehood, religion and irreligion, he does virtually,
actually, call evil good and good evil. When one admits generally the
turpitude of fraud, impurity, intemperance, malignity, &c., and yet
in insulated cases treats these as peccadilloes, inadvertences, &c.,
he cannot be protected by the mere assertion of a few general
principles from the fatal charge of calling evil good. And as a
counterpart of this, he who praises and admires all goodness in the
abstract, but detests it when realised in concrete excellence, really
and practically calls good evil. And he who, in relation to the
self-same acts performed by different men, has a judgment suited to
the case of each, all compassion to the wilful transgressions of the
wicked, and all inexorable sternness to the infirmities of godly men,
to all intents and purposes incurs the woe pronounced on those who
call evil good and good evil. These distinctions may at present
appear arbitrary, frivolous, or false, and, as a necessary
consequence, the guilt of confounding them may almost fade to
nothing,--to a stain so faint upon the conscience as to need no blood
of expiation to remove it. But the day is coming when the eye of
reason shall no longer find it possible to look at light and darkness
as the same, and the woe already heard shall then be seen and felt.
From the darkness and bitterness of that damnation may we all find
deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord!--_J. Addison Alexander,
D.D.: The Gospel of Jesus Christ,_ pp. 568-578.