'Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till
there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the
earth! 9. In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, Of a truth many houses
shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant. 10. Yea,
ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer
shall yield an ephah. 11. Woe unto them that rise up early in the
morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night,
till wine inflame them! 12. And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and
pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of
the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands. 13. Therefore my
people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and
their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with
thirst. 14. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth
without measure: and their glory and their multitude, and their pomp,
and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. 15. And the mean man
shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the
eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: 16. But the Lord of hosts shall be
exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in
righteousness. 17. Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and
the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat. 18. Woe unto them
that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart
rope: 19. That say, Let Him make speed, and hasten His work, that we
may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and
come, that we may know it! 20. Woe unto them that call evil good, and
good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that
put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! 21. Woe unto them that are
wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! 22. Woe unto
them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle
strong drink: 23. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away
the righteousness of the righteous from him! 24. Therefore as the fire
devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root
shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because
they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word
of the Holy One of Israel. 25. Therefore is the anger of the Lord
kindled against His people, and He hath stretched forth His hand
against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and
their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this His
anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still. 26. And
He will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto
them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed
swiftly: 17. None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall
slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed,
nor the latchet of their shoes be broken: 28. Whose arrows are sharp,
and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be counted like
flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: 29. Their roaring shall be
like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar,
and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall
deliver it. 30. And in that day they shall roar against them like the
roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and
sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.'--ISAIAH v.
8-30.
Drunkenness is, in this text, one of a ring of plague-spots on the body
politic of Judah. The prophet six times proclaims 'woe' as the
inevitable end of these; such 'sickness' is 'unto death' unless
repentance and another course of conduct bring healing. But drunkenness
appears twice in this grim catalogue, and the longest paragraph of
denunciation (vv, 11-17) is devoted to it. Its connection with the
other vices attacked is loose, but it is worth noting that all these
have an inner kinship, and tend to appear together. They are 'all in a
string,' and where a community is cursed with one, the others will not
be far away. They are a knot of serpents intertwined. We touch but
slightly on the other vices denounced by the prophet's burning words,
but we must premise the general observation that the same
uncompromising plainness and boldness in speaking out as to social sins
ought to characterise Christian teachers to-day. The prophet's office
is not extinct in the church.
The first plague-spot is the accumulation of wealth in few hands, and
the selfish withdrawal of its possessors from the life of the
community. In an agricultural society like that of Judah, that clotting
of wealth took the shape of 'land-grabbing,' and of evicting the small
proprietors. We see it in more virulent forms in our great commercial
centres, where the big men often become big by crushing out the little
ones, and denude themselves of responsibility to the community in
proportion as they clothe themselves with wealth. Wherever wealth is
thus congested, and its obligations ignored by selfish indulgence, the
seeds are sown which will spring up one day in 'anarchism.' A man need
not be a prophet to have it whispered in his ear, as Isaiah had, that
the end of selfish capitalism is a convulsion in which 'many houses
shall be desolate,' and many fields barren. England needs the warning
as much as Isaiah's Judah did.
Such selfish wealth leads, among other curses, to indolence and
drunkenness, as the next woe shows. The people described make drinking
the business of their lives, beginning early and sitting late. They
have a varnish of art over their swinishness, and must have music as
well as wine. So, in many a drink-shop in England, a piano or a band
adds to the attractions, and gives a false air of aestheticism to pure
animalism. Isaiah feels the incongruity that music should be so
prostituted, and expresses it by adding to his list of musical
instruments 'and wine' as if he would underscore the degradation of the
great art to be the cupbearer of sots. Such revellers are blind to the
manifest tokens of God's working, and the 'operation of His hands'
excites only the tipsy gaze which sees nothing. That is one of the
curses which dog the drunkard-that he takes no warning from the plain
results of his vice as seen in others. He knows that it means shattered
health, ruined prospects, broken hearts, but nothing rouses him from
his fancy of impunity. High, serious thoughts of God and His government
of the world and of each life are strange to him. His sin compels him
to be godless, if he is not to go mad. But sometimes he wakes to a
moment's sight of realities, and then he is miserable till his next
bout buys fatal forgetfulness.
The prophet forces the end of a drunken nation on the unwilling
attention of the roisterers, in verses 13-17, which throb with
vehemence of warning and gloomy eloquence. What can such a people come
to but destruction? Knowledge must languish, hunger and thirst must
follow. Like some monster's gaping mouth, the pit yawns for them; and,
drawn as by irresistible attraction, the pomp and the wicked, senseless
jollity elide down into it. In the universal catastrophe, one thing
alone stands upright, and is lifted higher, because all else has sunk
so far,-the righteous judgment of the forgotten God. The grim picture
is as true for individuals and their deaths as for a nation and its
decay. And modern nations cannot afford to have this ulcer of
drunkenness draining away their strength any more than Judah could. 'By
the soul only are the nations great and free,' and a people can be
neither where the drink fiend has his way.
Three woes follow which are closely connected. That pronounced on
daring evil-doers, who not only let sin draw them to itself, but go
more than halfway to meet it, needing no temptation, but drawing it to
them eagerly, and scoffing at the merciful warnings of fatal
consequences, comes first. Next is a woe on those who play fast and
loose with plain morality, sophisticating conscience, and sapping the
foundations of law. Such juggling follows sensual indulgence such as
drunkenness, when it becomes habitual and audacious, as in the
preceding woe. Loose or perverted codes of morality generally spring
from bad living, seeking to shelter itself. Vicious principles are an
afterthought to screen vicious practices. The last subject of the
triple woes is self-conceit and pretence to superior illumination. Such
very superior persons are emancipated from the rules which bind the
common herd. They are so very clever that they have far outgrown the
creeping moralities, which may do for old women and children. Do we not
know the sort of people? Have we none of them surviving to-day?
Then Isaiah comes back to his theme of drunkenness, but in a new
connection. It poisons the fountain of justice. There is a world of
indignant contempt in the prophet's scathing picture of those who are
'mighty' and 'men of strength,'-but how is their strength shown? They
can stand any quantity of wine, and can 'mix their drinks,' and yet
look sober! What a noble use to put a good constitution to! These
valiant topers are in authority as judges, and they sell their
judgments to get money for their debauches. We do not see much of such
scandals among us, but yet we have heard of leagues between
liquor-sellers and municipal authorities, which certainly do _not_
'make for righteousness.' When shall we learn and practise the lesson
that Isaiah was reading his countrymen,--that it is fatal to a nation
when the private character of public men is regarded as of no account
in political and civic life? The prophet had no doubt as to what must
be the end of a state of things in which the very courts of law were
honeycombed with corruption, and demoralised by the power of drink. His
tremendous image of a fierce fire raging across a dry prairie, and
burning the grass to its very roots, while the air is stifling with the
thick 'dust' of the conflagration, proclaims the sure fate, sooner or
later, of every community and individual that 'rejects the law of the
Lord of Hosts, and despises the word of the Holy One of Israel.' Change
the name, and the tale is told of us; for it is 'righteousness that
exalteth a nation,' and no single vice drags after it more infallibly
such a multitude of attendant demons as the vice of drunkenness, which
is a crying sin of England to-day.