A VERSE BY VERSE COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH CHAPTER 28.

1. ISAIAH 28 COMMENTARY
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Woe to the Leaders of Ephraim and Judah
1 Woe to that wreath, the pride of
Ephraim’s drunkards,
to the fading flower, his glorious beauty,
set on the head of a fertile valley—
to that city, the pride of those laid low by wine!
1.BARNES, “Wo - (see the note at Isa_18:1). The word here is used to denounce impending
judgment.
To the crown of pride - This is a Hebrew mode of expression, denoting the proud or
haughty crown. There can be no doubt that it refers to the capital of the kingdom of Ephraim;
that is, to Samaria. This city was built by Omri, who purchased ‘the hill Samaria’ of Shemer, for
two talents of silver, equal in value to 792 British pounds, 11 shillings, 8d., and built the city on
the hill, and called it, after the name of Shemer, Samaria 1Ki_16:24. Omri was king of Israel
(925 b.c.), and he made this city the capital of his kingdom. The city was built on a pleasant and
fertile hill, and surrounded with a rich valley, with a circle of hills beyond; and the beauty of the
hill on which the city was built suggested the idea of a wreath or chaplet of flowers, or a “crown.”
After having been destroyed and reduced to an inconsiderable place, it was restored by Herod
the Great, 21 b.c., who called it “Sebaste” (Latin, “Augusta”), in honor of the Emperor Augustus.
It is usually mentioned by travelers under the name of Sebaste. Maundrell (Travels, p. 58) says,
‘Sebaste, the ancient Samaria, is situated on a long mount of an oval figure; having first a fruitful
valley, and then a ring of hills running round it.’ The following is the account which is given by
Richardson: ‘Its situation is extremely beautiful, and strong by nature; more so, I think, than
Jerusalem. It stands on a fine large insulated hill, compassed all round by a broad, deep valley.
The valley is surrounded by four hills, one on each side, which are cultivated in terraces to the
top, sown with grain, and planted with fig and olive trees, as is also the valley. The hill of
Samaria, likewise, rises in terraces to a height equal to any of the adjoining mountains.’ Dr.
Robinson, who visited this place in 1838, says, ‘The find round swelling hill, or almost mountain
of Samaria, stands alone in the midst of the great basin of some two hours (seven or eight miles)
in diameter, surrounded by higher mountains on every side. It is near the eastern side of the
basin; and is connected with the eastern mountains, somewhat after the manner of a
promontory, by a much lower ridge, having a wady both on the south and on the north. The
mountains and the valleys around are to a great extent arable, and enlivened by many villages

2. and the hand of cultivation. From all these circumstances, the situation of the ancient Samaria is
one of great beauty.
The hill itself is cultivated to the top; and, at about midway of the ascent, is surrounded by a
narrow terrace of level land like a belt, below which the roots of the hill spread off more
gradually into the valleys. The whole hill of Sebastich (the Arabic form for the name Sebaste)
consists of fertile soil; it is cultivated to the top, and has upon it many olive and fig trees. It
would be difficult to find, in all Palestine, a situation of equal strength, fertility, and beauty
combined. In all these particulars, it has very greatly the advantage over Jerusalem.’ (Bib.
Researches, vol. iii. pp. 136-149). Standing thus by itself, and cultivated to the top, and
exceedingly fertile, it was compared by the prophet to a crown, or garland of flowers - such as
used to be worn on the head, especially on festival occasions.
To the drunkards of Ephraim - Ephraim here denotes the kingdom of Israel, whose
capital was Samaria (see the note at Isa_7:2). That intemperance was the prevailing sin in the
kingdom of Israel is not improbable. It prevailed to a great extent also in the kingdom of Judah
(see Isa_28:7-8 : compare Isa_5:11, note; Isa_5:22, note).
Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower - That is, it shall soon be destroyed, as a
flower soon withers and fades away. This was fulfilled in the destruction that came upon
Samaria under the Assyrians when the ten tribes were carried into captivity 2Ki_17:3-6. The
allusion in this verse to the ‘crown’ and ‘the fading flower’ encircling Samaria, Grotius thinks is
derived from the fact that among the ancients, drunkards and revellers were accustomed to wear
a crown or garland on their heads, or that a wreath or chaplet of flowers was usually worn on
their festival occasions. That this custom prevailed among the Jews as well as among the Greeks
and Romans, is apparent from a statement by the author of the Book of Wisdom:
‘Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ornaments,
And let no flower of the spring pass by us;
Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered.’
- Wisdom Rom_2:7, Rom_2:8.
Which are on the head - Which flowers or chaplets are on the eminence that rises over the
fat valleys; that is, on Samaria, which seemed to stand as the head rising from the valley.
Of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine - That are occupied by, or in
the possession of, those who are overcome with wine. Margin, ‘Broken’ with wine. Hebrew, (‫יין‬
‫הלוּמי‬ halumey yayin) ‘Smitten with wine;’ corresponding to the Greek ᆆινοπλᆱξ oinoplex; that is,
they were overcome or subdued by it. A man’s reason, conscience, moral feelings, and physical
strength are all overcome by indulgence in wine, and the entire man is prostrate by it. This
passage is a proof of what has been often denied, but which further examination has abundantly
confirmed, that the inhabitants of wine countries are as certainly intemperate as those which
make rise of ardent spirits.
2. CLARKE, “Wo to the crown of pride - By the crown of pride, etc., Samaria is primarily
understood. “Sebaste, the ancient Samaria, is situated on a long mount of an oval figure, having
first a fruitful valley, and then a ring of hills running round about it;” Maundrell, p. 58. “E
regione horum ruderum mons est peramoenus, planitie admodum frugifera circumseptus,
super quem olim Samaria urbs condita fuit;” Fureri Itinerarium, p. 93. The city, beautifully
situated on the top of a round hill, and surrounded immediately with a rich valley and a circle of
other hills beyond it, suggested the idea of a chaplet or wreath of flowers worn upon their heads

3. on occasions of festivity, expressed by the proud crown and the fading flower of the drunkards.
That this custom of wearing chaplets in their banquets prevailed among the Jews, as well as
among the Greeks and Romans, appears from the following passage of the book of The Wisdom
of Solomon: -
“Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments,
And let no flower of the spring pass by us:
Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered.”
The Wisdom of Solomon 2:7, 8.
3. GILL, “Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim,.... Or, "of the
drunkards of Ephraim": or, "O crown of pride, O drunkards of Ephraim (l)"; who are both called
upon, and a woe denounced against them. Ephraim is put for the ten tribes, who were drunk
either in a literal sense, for to the sin of drunkenness were they addicted, Hos_7:5, Amo_6:6.
The Jews say (m), that wine of Prugiatha (which perhaps was a place noted for good wine), and
the waters of Diomasit (baths), cut off the ten tribes from Israel; which both Jarchi and Kimchi,
on the place, make mention of; that is, as Buxtorf (n) interprets it, pleasures and delights
destroyed the ten tribes. The inhabitants of Samaria, and the places adjacent, especially were
addicted to this vice; these places abounding with excellent wines. Sichem, which were in these
parts, is thought to be called, from the drunkenness of its inhabitants, Sychar, Joh_4:5 this is a
sin very uncomely in any, but especially in professors of religion, as these were, and ought to be
declaimed against: or they were drunkards in a metaphorical sense, either with idolatry, the two
calves being set up in Dan and Bethel, which belonged to the ten tribes; just as the kings of the
earth are said to be drunk with the wine of antichrist's fornication, or the idolatry of the church
of Rome, Rev_17:2 or with pride and haughtiness, being elated with the fruitfulness of their
country, their great affluence and riches, and numbers of people; in all which they were superior
to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and in which they piqued themselves, and are therefore
called "the crown of pride"; and especially their king may be meant, who was lifted up with pride
that he ruled over such a country and people; or rather the city of Samaria, the metropolis of the
ten tribes, and the royal city. Perhaps there may be an allusion to the crowns wore by drunkards
at their revels, and particularly by such who were mighty to drink wine or strong drink, and
overcame others, and triumphed in it: pride and sensuality are the vices condemned, and they
often go together:
whose glorious beauty; which lay in the numbers of their inhabitants, in their wealth and
riches, and in their fruits of corn and wine:
is a fading flower; not to be depended on, soon destroyed, and quickly gone:
which are on the head of the fat valleys; meaning particularly the corn and wine, the
harvest and vintage, with which the fruitful valleys being covered, looked very beautiful and
glorious: very probably particular respect is had to Samaria, the head of the kingdom, and which
was situated on a hill, and surrounded with fruitful valleys; for not Jerusalem is here meant, as
Cocceius; nor Gethsemane, by the fat valleys, as Jerom:
of them that are overcome with wine; or smitten, beaten (o) knocked down with it, as with
a hammer, and laid prostrate on the ground, where they lie fixed to it, not able to get up; a true
picture of a drunkard, that is conquered by wine, and enslaved unto it; see Isa_28:3.

4. 4. HENRY, “Here, I. The prophet warns the kingdom of the ten tribes of the judgments that
were coming upon them for their sins, which were soon after executed by the king of Assyria,
who laid their country waste, and carried the people into captivity. Ephraim had his name from
fruitfulness, their soil being very fertile and the products of it abundant and the best of the kind;
they had a great many fat valleys (Isa_28:1, Isa_28:4), and Samaria, which was situated on a
hill, was, as it were, on the head of the fat valleys. Their country was rich and pleasant, and as
the garden of the Lord: it was the glory of Canaan, as that was the glory of all lands; their harvest
and vintage were the glorious beauty on the head of their valleys, which were covered over with
corn and vines. Now observe,
1. What an ill use they made of their plenty. What God gave them to serve him with they
perverted, and abused, by making it the food and fuel of their lusts. (1.) They were puffed up
with pride by it. The goodness with which God crowned their years, which should have been to
him a crown of praise, was to them a crown of pride. Those that are rich in the world are apt to
be high-minded, 1Ti_6:17. Their king, who wore the crown, was proud that he ruled over so rich
a country; Samaria, their royal city, was notorious for pride. Perhaps it was usual at their
festivals, or revels, to wear garlands made up of flowers and ears of corn, which they wore in
honour of their fruitful country. Pride was a sin that generally prevailed among them, and
therefore the prophet, in his name who resists the proud, boldly proclaims a woe to the crown of
pride. If those who wear crowns be proud of them, let them not think to escape this woe. What
men are proud of, be it ever so mean, is to them as a crown; he that is proud thinks himself as
great as a king. But woe to those who thus exalt themselves, for they shall be abased; their pride
is the preface to their destruction. (2.) They indulged themselves in sensuality. Ephraim was
notorious for drunkenness, and excess of riot; Samaria, the head of the fat valleys, was full of
those that were overcome with wine, were broken with it, so the margin. See how foolishly
drunkards act, and no marvel when, in the very commission of the sin, they make fools and
brutes of themselves; they yield, [1.] To be conquered by the sin; it overcomes them, and brings
them into bondage (2Pe_2:19); they are led captive by it, and the captivity is the more shameful
and inglorious because it is voluntary. Some of these wretched slaves have themselves owned
that there is not a greater drudgery in the world than hard drinking. They are overcome not with
the wine, but with the love of it. [2.] To be ruined by it. They are broken by wine. Their
constitution is broken by it, and their health ruined. They are broken in the callings and estates,
and their souls are in danger of being eternally undone, and all this for the gratification of a base
lust. Woe to these drunkards of Ephraim! Ministers must bring the general woes of the word
home to particular places and persons. We must say, Woe to this or that person, if he be a
drunkard. There is a particular woe to the drunkards of Ephraim, for they are of God's
professing people, and it becomes them worse than any other; they know better, and therefore
should give a better example. Some make the crown of pride to belong to the drunkards, and to

5. mean the garlands with which those were crowned that got the victory in their wicked drinking
matches and drank down the rest of the company. They were proud of their being mighty to
drink wine; but woe to those who thus glory in their shame.
5. JAMISON, “Isa_28:1-29. The twenty-eighth through thirty-third chapters form almost
one continuous prophecy concerning the destruction of Ephraim, the impiety and folly of Judah,
the danger of their league with Egypt, the straits they would be reduced to by Assyria, from
which Jehovah would deliver them on their turning to Him; the twenty-eighth chapter refers to
the time just before the sixth year of Hezekiak’s reign, the rest not very long before his
fourteenth year.
crown of pride — Hebrew for “proud crown of the drunkards,” etc. [Horsley], namely,
Samaria, the capital of Ephraim, or Israel. “Drunkards,” literally (Isa_28:7, Isa_28:8; Isa_5:11,
Isa_5:22; Amo_4:1; Amo_6:1-6) and metaphorically, like drunkards, rushing on to their own
destruction.
beauty ... flower — “whose glorious beauty or ornament is a fading flower.” Carrying on the
image of “drunkards”; it was the custom at feasts to wreathe the brow with flowers; so Samaria,
“which is (not as English Version, ‘which are’) upon the head of the fertile valley,” that is,
situated on a hill surrounded with the rich valleys as a garland (1Ki_16:24); but the garland is
“fading,” as garlands often do, because Ephraim is now close to ruin (compare Isa_16:8);
fulfilled 721 b.c. (2Ki_17:6, 2Ki_17:24).
6. K&D, “Isaiah, like Micah, commences with the fall of the proud and intoxicated Samaria.
“Woe to the proud crown of the drunken of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of its splendid
ornament, which is upon the head of the luxuriant valley of those slain with wine.” The allusion
is to Samaria, which is called (1.) “the pride-crown of the drunken of Ephraim,” i.e., the crown of
which the intoxicated and blinded Ephraimites were proud (Isa_29:9; Isa_19:14), and (2.) “the
fading flower” (on the expression itself, compare Isa_1:30; Isa_40:7-8) “of the ornament of his
splendour,” i.e., the flower now fading, which had once been the ornament with which they
made a show. This flower stood “upon the head of the valley of fatnesses of those slain with
wine” (cf., Isa_16:8), i.e., of the valley so exuberant with fruitfulness, belonging to the
Ephraimites, who were thoroughly enslaved by wine. Samaria stood upon a beautiful swelling
hill, which commanded the whole country round in a most regal way (Amo_4:1; Amo_6:1), in
the centre of a large basin, of about two hours' journey in diameter, shut in by a gigantic circle of
still loftier mountains (Amo_3:9). The situation was commanding; the hill terraced up to the
very top; and the surrounding country splendid and fruitful (Ritter, Erdkunde, xvi. 660, 661).
The expression used by the prophet is intentionally bombastic. He heaps genitives upon
genitives, as in Isa_10:12; Isa_21:17. The words are linked together in pairs. She
manı̄m
(fatnesses) has the absolute form, although it is annexed to the following word, the logical
relation overruling the syntactical usage (compare Isa_32:13; 1Ch_9:13). The sesquipedalia
verba are intended to produce the impression of excessive worldly luxuriance and pleasure,
upon which the woe is pronounced. The epithet nobhel (fading: possibly a genitive, as in
Isa_28:4), which is introduced here into the midst of this picture of splendour, indicates that all
this splendour is not only destined to fade, but is beginning to fade already.

6. 7. BI, “Woe to the crown of pride
Chapter twenty-eight is the first of a great group of representative discourses, chaps. 28-32, all
dealing with the relation of Judah to Assyria, and all enforcing the same political principles.
(Prof. Driver, D. D.)
Overcome with wine
Words are scarcely possible with which to express greater sorrow and calamity falling on those
who are overcome with wine. God is said to be against them. Their beauty and pride shall fade
away. They shall err in judgment; shall have dim vision of truth and duty; shall lose all
susceptibility of moral and religious impressions; shall speak with stammering tongue; shall be
ensnared with all evil. Their condition shall be heart sickening and hopeless.
I. A TERRIBLE CONTRAST. Ephraim in this passage stands for the kingdom of the ten tribes:
the drunkards of Ephraim for its dissipated and dissolute people; the crown of Samaria for its
capital city; though there is possibly reference here to the magnificent hill on which the city
stood. Its site was a “chosen one,” than which, according to Rawlinson, none could be found, in
all Palestine of greater “combined strength, fertility, and beauty,” having in these respects
largely the “advantage over Jerusalem.” It was, however, full of drunkards. Intemperance was
not only the prevailing iniquity of the place, but a form of sin and shame which was the fruitful
source of innumerable afflictions and calamities. The figure is of a people “smitten, beaten,
knocked down” with wine, as with a hammer; laid prostrate and helpless on the ground in utter
bewilderment, and unconscious as to what would happen to them, their homes, or their nation.
This was the doom represented as a Divine judgment upon them; but really the natural and
inevitable result of their being overcome with wine. Let all men be warned, especially the young.
The loss of everything desirable goes with the loss of control over appetite. But the contrast is as
terrible in communities, cities, and nations where drunkenness prevails! In the place of
industry, indolence obtains; in the place of intelligence, ignorance abounds; in the place of thrift
and comfort, poverty and wretchedness exist; in the place of honour and virtue, dishonour and
vice run riot; until life becomes scarcely endurable for one who would keep his “crown of pride”
and preserve the “glorious beauty” of true manhood.
II. THE TERRIBLE POWER OF APPETITE. It is absolutely destructive of the whole man! It is a
giant bringing his captive into complete subjection. All goes wrong with a man when he is under
the influence of strong drink! He cannot walk as a man; cannot work as a man; cannot talk as a
man; cannot think as a man; nor is he capable of accurate judgment in matters of small or large
concern. He tramples under his feet the most sacred associations and obligations of life; he loses
his love as a husband, father, son; he breaks hearts that cling to him more fondly than to aught
else in all the world; he finally becomes so bound as to render it practically impossible for him to
cast off his chains! All this comes not only to such as may be termed the ignorant and naturally
vicious, but to the learned and naturally virtuous. Men of culture and refinement, of education
and position, of inheritances and attainments, of rank and station, give way to the same
indulgences and fall into the same deeps! Fathers send the consuming currents through the
veins of their sons. Mothers give birth to children whose feverish bodies flame with hidden fires.
III. THE DUTY OF EARNEST OPPOSITION AND FEARLESS WARFARE AGAINST
INTEMPERANCE. We read here of a “residue of the people,” to whom the Lord of hosts would
be for a “crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty,” for a “spirit of judgment to him that sitteth
in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate.” The literal meaning of
this is that after the pride of the apostate tribes had fallen, they who remained true to God and to
themselves should glory and delight in Jehovah as their chief privilege and honour. This was the

7. prophecy, and it was blessedly fulfilled. When Israel was finally ruined, Judah rose to power
under Hezekiah. He resisted all enticements, and in every way sought the reformation of his
people. Many were held back from being overcome with wine. These were “the residue of the
people,” and for their sake God endued the magistrates and counsellors with the spirit of
discernment and equity; also gave courage to the captains who led forth their troops from the
gate of Jerusalem and forced the war even to the gates of their enemies. The lesson here is one of
united and fearless opposition to intemperance, and to whatever exposes the people to its
ravages. While all practicable efforts should be made to reform those who are addicted to their
cups, special care should be taken of children and youth that they may be kept from forming the
drink habit.
1. The home should present no temptation on this line.
2. Each Sunday school should be a temperance society, organised and equipped for work.
3. The physical effects of intemperance should be taught in all our public schools.
4. Pastors, too, have a duty on this line. (Justin E. Twitchell)
Samaria
The beautiful city of Samaria crowning a low hill rising from the valley is like a garland on the
brow of the revellers. The crown is already faded. (A. B. Davidson, LL. D.)
Overcome with wine
Literally, “struck down.” Hard drinking is compared to a combat between the toper and his
drink, in which the latter is victorious. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
“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. (J. Parker, D. D.)
8. CALVIN, “1.Woe to the crown of pride. Isaiah now enters on another and different subject from that
which goes before it; for this discourse must be separated from the former one. He shews that the anger
of the Lord will quickly overtake, first, Israel, and afterwards the Jews; for it is probable that the kingdom
of Israel was still entire when the Prophet uttered these predictions, though nothing more can be affirmed
with certainty than that there is good reason to believe that the ten tribes had not at that time been led
into captivity.
Accordingly, the Prophet follows this order. First, he shews that the vengeance of God is not far from
Israel, because various sins and corruption of every kind prevailed in it; for they were swelled with pride
and insolence, had plunged into their luxuries and given way to every kind of licentiousness, and,

8. consequently, had broken out into open contempt of God, as is usually the case when men take
excessive liberties; for they quickly forget God. Secondly, he shews that God in some measure restrains
his anger by sparing the tribe of Judah; for when the ten tribes, with the half tribe of Benjamin, had been
carried into captivity, the Jews still remained entire and uninjured. Isaiah extols this compassion which
God manifested, in not permitting his Church to perish, but preserving some remnant. At the same time
he shews that the Jews are so depraved and corrupted that they do not permit God to exercise this
compassion, and that, in consequence of the wickedness which prevailed among them, not less than in
Israel, they too must feel the avenging hand of God. This order ought to be carefully observed; for many
persons blunder in the exposition of this passage, because the Prophet has not expressly mentioned the
name of Israel, though it is sufficiently known that Ephraim includes the ten tribes.
As to the words, since the particle ‫הוי‬ (hōī) very frequently denotes “ evil on a person,” I was unwilling to
depart from the ordinary opinion of commentators, more especially because the Prophet openly threatens
in this passage; yet if the translation, Alas the crown! be preferred, I have no objection.
For the excellence of its glory shall be a fading flower (210) The copulative ‫ו‬ (vau) signifies for or because.
He compares the “” and “” of Israel to “ fading flower,” as will afterwards be stated. In general, he
pronounces a curse on the wealth of the Israelites; for by the word “” he means nothing else than the
wicked confidence with which they were puffed up, and which proceeded from the excess of their riches.
These vices are almost always joined together, because abundance and fullness produce cruelty and
pride; for we are elated by prosperity, and do not know how to use it with moderation. They inhabited a
rich and fertile country, and on this account Amos (Amo_4:1) calls them “ cows,” which feed on the
mountain of Samaria. Thus, being puffed up by their wealth, they despised both God and men. The
Prophet calls them “” because, being intoxicated by prosperity, they dreaded no adversity, and thought
that they were beyond the reach of all danger, and that they were not even subject to God himself.
A fading flower. He alludes, I doubt not, to the crowns or chaplets (211) which were used at banquets, and
which are still used in many places in the present day. The Israelites indulged in gluttony and
drunkenness, and the fertility of the soil undoubtedly gave occasion to their intemperance. By calling it “
fading flower” he follows out his comparison, elegantly alluding to flowers which suddenly wither.
Which is on the head of the valley of fatness. (212) He says that that glory is “ the head of the valley of
fatness,” because they saw under their feet their pastures, the fertility of which still more inflamed their
pride. ‫שמנים‬ (shĕāī) is translated by some “ ointments;” but that is inapplicable, for it denotes abundance
and fullness, which led them to neglect godliness and to despise God. By the word “” or “” he alludes to
the position of the country, because the Israelites chiefly inhabited rich valleys. He places on it a crown,

9. which surrounds the whole kingdom; because it was flourishing and abounded in every kind of wealth.
This denotes riches, from which arose sluggishness, presumption, rashness, intemperance, and cruelty.
This doctrine relates to us also; for the example of these men reminds us that we ought to use prosperity
with moderation, otherwise we shall be very unhappy, for the Lord will curse all our riches and
abundance.
8B. PULPIT, “A WARNING TO SAMARIA. The prophet has now east his eagle glance over the whole
world and over all time. He has denounced woe upon all the principal nations of the earth (Isaiah 13-23.),
glanced at the destruction of the world itself (Isa_24:17-20), and sung songs over the establishment of
Christ's kingdom, and the ingathering of the nations into it (Isaiah 25-27.). In the present chapter he
returns to the condition of things in his own time and among his own people. After a brief warning,
addressed to Samaria, he turns to consider the condition of Judah, which he accuses of following the
example of Samaria, of perishing through self-indulgence and lack of knowledge (Isa_28:7-12). He then
proceeds to expostulate seriously with the "rulers of Jerusalem," on whom lies the chief responsibility for
its future.
Isa_28:1
Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkard; rather, of the drunkards, The "drunkards of Ephraim," or of the
ten tribes, were at once intoxicated with wine (Amo_4:1; Amo_6:6) and with pride (Amo_6:13). As the
external aspect of affairs grew mere and more threatening through the advances of Tiglath-Pileser and
Shalmaneser, they gave themselves up more and more to self-indulgence and luxury, lay upon beds of
ivory, drank wine from bowls, feasted to the sound of the viol, and even invented fresh instruments of
music (Amo_6:4, Amo_6:5). At the same time, they said in their hearts, "Have we not taken by our own
strength?" (Amo_6:13). They persisted in regarding themselves as secure, when even ordinary political
foresight might have seen that their end was approaching. Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower;
rather, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty. The "glorious beauty" of Samaria was a beauty of
magnificent luxury. "Summer" and "winter houses," distinct each from the other (Amo_3:15); "ivory
palaces" (1Ki_22:39; Amo_3:15); a wealth of "gardens, vineyards, fig-orchards, and olive yards"
(Amo_4:9); residences of "hewn stone" (Amo_5:11); feasts enlivened with "the melody of viols"
(Amo_5:23); "beds of ivory" (Amo_6:4); "wine in bowls" (Amo_6:6); "chief ointments" (Amo_6:6);
constituted a total of luxurious refinement beyond which few had proceeded at the time, and which Isaiah
was fain to recognize, in a worldly point of view, as "glorious" and "beautiful." But the beauty was of a kind
liable to fade, and it was already fading under the sirocco of Assyrian invasion. Which are on the head
of the fat valleys; rather, which is on the head of the rich valley. Samaria was built on a hill of an oval
form, which rose up in the midst of a fertile valley shut in by mountains. The prophet identifies the valley

10. with the kingdom itself, and then personifies it, and regards its head as crowned by the fading flower of
Samaria's beauty.
9. EBC, “GOD’S COMMONPLACE
ABOUT 725 B.C.
THE twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Isaiah is one of the greatest of his prophecies. It is
distinguished by that regal versatility of style, which places its author at the head of Hebrew
writers. Keen analyses of character, realistic contrasts between sin and judgment, clever retorts
and epigrams, rapids of scorn, and "a spate" of judgment, but for final issue a placid stream of
argument banked by sweet parable-such are the literary charms of the chapter, which derives its
moral grandeur from the force with which its currents set towards faith and reason, as together
the salvation of states, politicians, and private men. The style mirrors life about ourselves, and
still tastes fresh to thirsty men. The truths are relevant to every day in which luxury and
intemperance abound, in which there are eyes too fevered by sin to see beauty in simple purity,
and minds so surfeited with knowledge or intoxicated with their own cleverness, that they call
the maxims of moral reason commonplace and scorn religious instruction as food for babes.
Some time when the big, black cloud was gathering again on the north, Isaiah raised his voice to
the magnates of Jerusalem: "Lift your heads from your wine-bowls; look north. The sunshine is
still on Samaria, and your fellow-drinkers there are revelling in security. But the storm creeps up
behind. They shall certainly perish soon; even you cannot help seeing that. Let it scare you, for
their sin is yours, and that storm will not exhaust itself on Samaria. Do not think that your clever
policies, alliance with Egypt or the treaty with Assyria herself, shall save you. Men are never
saved from death and hell by making covenants with them. Scorners of religion and
righteousness, except ye cease being sceptical and drunken, and come back from your diplomacy
to faith and reason, ye shall not be saved! This destruction that looms is going to cover the whole
earth. So stop your running to and fro across it in search of alliances. ‘He that believeth shall not
make haste.’ Stay at home and trust in the God of Zion, for Zion is the one thing that shall
survive." In the parable, which closes the prophecy, Isaiah offers some relief to this dark
prospect: "Do not think of God as a mere disaster-monger, maker of terrors for men. He has a
plan, even in catastrophe, and this deluge, which looks like destruction for all of us, has its
method, term, and fruits, just as much as the husbandman’s harrowing of the earth or threshing
of the corn."
The chapter with this argument falls into four divisions.
I. THE WARNING FROM SAMARIA
(Isa_28:1-6)
They had always been hard drinkers in North Israel. Fifty years before, Amos flashed judgment
on those who trusted in the mount of Samaria, "lolling upon their couches and gulping their
wine out of basons," women as well as men. Upon these same drunkards of Ephraim, now
soaked and "stunned with wine," Isaiah fastens his Woe. Sunny the sky and balmy the air in
which they lie, stretched upon flowers by the heads of their fat valleys- a land that tempts its
inhabitants with the security of perpetual summer. But God’s swift storm drives up the valley-
hail, rain, and violent streams from every gorge. Flowers, wreaths, and pampered bodies are
trampled in the mire. The glory of sunny Ephraim is as the first ripe fig a man findeth, and
"while it is yet in his hand, he eateth it up." But while drunken magnates and the flowers of a
rich land are swept away, there is a residue who can and do abide even that storm, to whom the

11. Lord Himself shall be for a crown, "a spirit of justice to him that sitteth for justice, and for
strength to them that turn back the battle at the gate."
Isaiah’s intention is manifest, and his effort a great one. It is to rob passion of its magic and
change men’s temptations to their disgusts, by exhibiting how squalid passion shows beneath
disaster, and how gloriously purity shines surviving it. It is to strip luxury and indulgence of
their attractiveness by drenching them with the storm of judgment, and then not to leave them
stunned, but to rouse in them a moral admiration and envy by the presentation of certain grand
survivals of the storm-unstained justice and victorious valour. Isaiah first sweeps the
atmosphere, hot from infective passion, with the cold tempest from the north. Then in the clear
shining after rain he points to two figures, which have preserved through temptation and
disaster, and now lift against a smiling sky, the ideal that those corrupt judges and drunken
warriors have dragged into the mire-"him that sitteth for justice and him that turneth back the
battle at the gate." The escape from sensuality, this passage suggests, is twofold. There is the
exposure to nature where God’s judgments sweep their irresistible way; and then from the
despair, which the unrelieved spectacle of judgment produces, there is the recovery to moral
effort through the admiration of those purities and heroisms, that by God’s Spirit have survived.
When God has put a conscience into the art or literature of any generation, they have followed
this method of Isaiah, but not always to the healthy end which he reaches. To show the slaves of
Circe the physical disaster impending-which you must begin by doing if you are to impress their
brutalised minds-is not enough. The lesson of Tennyson’s "Vision of Sin" and of Arnold’s "New
Sirens," that night and frost, decay and death, come down at last on pampered sense, is
necessary, but not enough. Who stops there remains a defective and morbid moralist. When you
have made the sensual shiver before the disease that inevitably awaits them, you must go on to
show that there are men who have the secret of surviving the most terrible judgments of God,
and lift their figures calm and victorious against the storm-washed sky. Preach the depravity of
men, but never apart from the possibilities that remain in them. It is Isaiah’s health as a moralist
that he combines the two. No prophet ever threatened judgment more inexorable and complete
than he. Yet he never failed to tell the sinner how possible it was for him to be different. If it
were necessary to crush men in the mud, Isaiah would not leave them there with the hearts of
swine. But he put conscience in them, and the envy of what was pure, and the admiration of
what was victorious. Even as they wallowed, he pointed them to the figures of men like
themselves, who had survived and overcome by the Spirit of God. Here we perceive the ethical
possibilities that lay in his fundamental doctrine of a remnant. Isaiah never crushed men
beneath the fear of judgment, without revealing to them the possibility and beauty of victorious
virtue. Had we lived in those great days, what a help he had been to us-what a help he may be
still!-not only firm to declare that the wages of sin is death, but careful to effect that our
humiliation shall not be despair, and that even when we feel our shame and irretrievableness the
most, we shall have the opportunity to behold our humanity crowned and seated on the throne
from which we had fallen, our humanity driving back the battle from the gate against which we
had been hopelessly driven! That seventh verse sounds like a trumpet in the ears of enervated
and despairing men.
II. GOD’S COMMONPLACE
(Isa_28:7-13)
But Isaiah has cast his pearls before swine. The men of Jerusalem, whom he addresses, are too
deep in sensuality to be roused by his noble words. "Even priest and prophet stagger through
strong drink"; and the class that should have been the conscience of the city, responding:
immediately to the word of God, "reel in vision and stumble in judgment." They turn upon
Isaiah’s earnest message with tipsy men’s insolence. Isa_28:9-10 should be within inverted
commas, for they are the mocking reply of drunkards over their cups. "Whom is he going to

12. teach knowledge, and upon whom is he trying to force ‘the Message’," as he calls it? "Them that
are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts?" Are we school-children, that he treats
us with his endless platitudes and repetitions.-"precept upon precept and precept upon precept,
line upon line and line upon line, here a little and there a little." So did these bibulous prophets,
priests, and politicians mock Isaiah’s messages of judgment, wagging their heads in mimicry of
his simple, earnest tones. "We must conceive the abrupt, intentionally short, reiterated and
almost childish words of Isa_28:10 as spoken in mimicry, with a mocking motion of the head,
and in a childish, stammering, taunting tone."
But Isaiah turns upon them with their own words: "You call me, Stammerer! I tell you that God,
Who speaks through me, and Whom in me you mock, will one day speak again to you in a
tongue that shall indeed sound stammering to you. When those far-off barbarians have reached
your walls, and over them taunt you in uncouth tones, then shall you hear how God can
stammer. For these shall be the very voice of Him, and as He threatens you with captivity it shall
be your bitterness to remember how by me He once offered you ‘a rest and refreshing,’ which
you refused. I tell you more. God will not only speak in words, but in deeds, and then truly your
nickname for His message shall be fulfilled to you. Then shall the word of the Lord be unto you
‘precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and
there a little.’ For God shall speak with the terrible simplicity and slowness of deeds, with the
gradual growth of fate, with the monotonous stages of decay, till step by step you ‘go, and
stumble backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.’ You have scorned my instruction as
monosyllables fit for children! By irritating monosyllables of gradual penalty shall God instruct
you the second time."
This is not only a very clever and cynical retort, but the statement of a moral principle. We
gather from Isaiah that God speaks twice to men, first in words and then by deeds, but both
times very simply and plainly. And if men deride and abuse the simplicity of the former, if they
ignore moral and religious truths because they are elementary, and rebel against the quiet
reiteration of simple voices, with which God sees it most healthy to conduct their education,
then they shall be stunned by the commonplace pertinacity, with which the effects of their
insolence work themselves out in life. God’s ways with men are mostly commonplace; that is the
hardest lesson we have to learn. The tongue of conscience speaks like the tongue of time,
prevailingly by ticks and moments; not in undue excitement of soul and body, not in the stirring
up of out: passions nor by enlisting our ambitions, not in thunder nor in startling visions, but by
everyday precepts of faithfulness, honour, and purity, to which conscience has to rise unwinged
by fancy or ambition, and dreadfully weighted with the dreariness of life. If we, carried away
upon the rushing interests of the world, and with our appetite spoiled by the wealth and
piquancy of intellectual knowledge, despise the simple monitions of conscience and Scripture, as
uninteresting and childish, this is the risk we run, -that God will speak to us in another, and this
time unshirkable, kind of commonplace. What that is we shall understand, when a career of
dissipation or unscrupulous ambition has bereft life of all interest and joy, when one enthusiasm
after another grows dull, and one pleasure after another tasteless, when all the little things of life
preach to us of judgment, and "the grasshopper becometh a burden," and we, slowly descending
through the drab and monotony of decay, suffer the last great commonplace, death. There can
be no greater irony than for the soul, which has sinned by too greedily seeking for sensation, to
find sensation absent even from the judgments she has brought upon herself. Poor Heine’s
"Confessions" acknowledge, at once with the appreciation of an artist and the pain of a victim,
the satire, with which the Almighty inflicts, in the way that Isaiah describes, His penalties upon
sins of sense.
III. COVENANTS WITH DEATH AND HELL
(Isa_28:14-22)

13. To Isaiah’s threats of destruction, the politicians of Jerusalem replied, We have bought
destruction off! They meant some treaty with a foreign power. Diplomacy is always obscure, and
at that distance its details are buried for us in impenetrable darkness. But we may safely
conclude that it was either the treaty of Ahaz with Assyria, or some counter-treaty executed with
Egypt since this power began again to rise into pretentiousness, or more probably still it was a
secret agreement with the southern power, while the open treaty with the northern was yet in
force. Isaiah, from the way in which he speaks, seems to have been in ignorance of all, except
that the politician’s boast was an unhallowed, underhand intrigue, accomplished by much
swindling and false conceit of cleverness. This wretched subterfuge Isaiah exposes in some of
the most powerful sentences he ever uttered. A faithless diplomacy was never more thoroughly
laid bare, in its miserable mixture of political pedantry and falsehood.
"Therefore hear the word of Jehovah, ye men of scorn, rulers of this people, which is in
Jerusalem!"
"Because ye have said, We have entered into a covenant with Death, and with Hell have we made
a bargain; the ‘Overflowing Scourge,"’ a current phrase of Isaiah’s which they fling back in his
teeth, "when it passeth along, shall not come unto us, for we have set lies as our refuge, and in
falsehood have we hidden ourselves" [the prophet’s penetrating scorn drags up into their boast
the secret conscience of their hearts, that after all lies did form the basis of this political
arrangement], "therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I lay in Zion for foundation a
stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make
haste." No need of swift couriers to Egypt, and fret and fever of poor political brains in
Jerusalem! The word make haste is onomatopoetic, like our fuss, and, if fuss may be applied to
the conduct of high affairs of state, its exact equivalent in meaning.
"And I will set justice for a line, and righteousness for a plummet, and hail shall sweep away
the subterfuge of lies, and the secrecy shall waters overflow. And cancelled shall be your
covenant with Death, and your bargain with Hell shall not stand."
"‘The Overflowing Scourge,"’ indeed! "When it passeth over, then ye shall be unto it for
trampling. As often as it passeth over, it shall take you away, for morning by morning shall it
pass over, by day and by night. Then shall it be sheer terror to realise ‘the Message’!" Too late
then for anything else. Had you realised "the Message" now, what rest and refreshing! But then
only terror.
"For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself upon it, and the covering narrower
than that he can wrap himself in it." This proverb seems to be struck out of the prophet by the
belief of the politicians, that they are creating a stable and restful policy for Judah. It flashes an
aspect of hopeless uneasiness over the whole political situation. However they make their bed,
with Egypt’s or Assyria’s help, they shall not find it comfortable. No cleverness of theirs can
create a satisfactory condition of affairs, no political arrangement, nothing short of faith, of
absolute reliance on that bare foundation-stone laid in Zion, -God’s assurance that Jerusalem is
inviolable.
"For Jehovah shall arise as on Mount Peratsim; He shall be stirred as in the valley of Gibeon,
to do His deed-strange is this deed of His, and to bring to pass His act-strange is His act."
"Now, therefore, play no more the scorner, lest your bands be made tight, for a consumption,
and that determined have I heard from the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, upon the whole earth." This
finishes the matter. Possibility of alliance there is for sane men nowhere in this world of Western
Asia, so evidently near convulsion. Only the foundation-stone in Zion shall be left. Cling to that.
When the pedantic members of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, in the year 1650,
were clinging with all the grip of their hard logic, but with very little heart, to the "Divine right of
kings," and attempting an impossible state, whose statute-book was to be the Westminster

14. Confession, and its chief executive officer King Charles II, Cromwell, then encamped at
Musselburgh, sent them that letter in which the famous sentence occurs:
"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. Precept may be
upon precept, line may be upon line," he goes on to say, "and yet the Word of the Lord may
be to some a word of Judgment; that they may fall backward, and be broken, and be snared,
and be taken! There may be a spiritual fulness, which the world may call drunkenness; as in
the second chapter of the Acts. There may be, as well, a carnal confidence upon
misunderstood and misapplied precepts, which may be called spiritual drunkenness. There
may be a Covenant made with Death and Hell! I will not say yours was so. But judge if such
things have a politic aim: To avoid the overflowing scourge; or, To accomplish worldly
interests? And if therein you have confederated with wicked and carnal men, and have
respect for them, or otherwise have drawn them in to associate with us, Whether this be a
covenant of God and spiritual? Bethink yourselves; we hope we do.
I pray you read the Twenty-eighth of Isaiah, from the fifth to the fifteenth verse. And do not
scorn to know that it is the Spirit that quickens and giveth life."
Cromwell, as we have said, is the best commentator Isaiah has ever had, and that by an instinct
born, not only of the same faith, but of experience in tackling similar sorts of character. In this
letter he is dealing, like Isaiah, with stubborn pedants, who are endeavouring to fasten the
national fortunes upon a Procrustean policy. The diplomacy of Jerusalem was very clever; the
Covenanting ecclesiasticism of Edinburgh was logical and consistent. But a Jewish alliance with
Assyria and the attempt of Scotsmen to force their covenant upon the whole United Kingdom
were equally sheer impossibilities. In either case "the bed was shorter than that a man could
stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than that he could wrap himself in it." Both, too,
were "covenants with Death and Hell"; for if the attempt of the Scots to secure Charles II by the
covenant was free from the falsehood of Jewish diplomacy, it was fatally certain, if successful, to
have led to the subversion of their highest religious interests; and history has proved that
Cromwell was no more than just in applying to it the strong expressions, which Isaiah uses Of
Judah’s ominous treaties with the unscrupulous heathen. Over against so pedantic an idea as
that of forcing the life of the three nations into the mould of the one Covenant, and so fatal a
folly as the attempt to commit the interests of religion to the keeping of the dissolute and
perjured king, Cromwell stands in his great toleration of everything but unrighteousness and his
strong conviction of three truths: - that the religious life of Great Britain and Ireland was too
rich and varied for the Covenant: that national and religious interests so complicated and
precious could be decided only upon the plainest principles of faith and justice: and that, tested
by these principles, Charles and his crew were as utterly without worth to the nation and as
pregnant with destruction, as Isaiah felt Assyria and Egypt to be to Judah. The battle-cries of the
two parties at Dunbar are significant of the spiritual difference between them. That of the Scots
was "The Covenant!" Cromwell’s was Isaiah’s own, "The Lord of Hosts!" However logical,
religious, and sincere theirs might be, it was at the best a scheme of men too narrow for events,
and fatally compromised by its association with Charles II. But Cromwell’s battle-cry required
only a moderately sincere faith from those who adopted it to ensure their victory. For to them it
meant just what it had meant to Isaiah, loyalty to a Divine providence, supreme in
righteousness, the willingness to be guided by events, interpreting them by no tradition or
scheme, but only by conscience. He who understands this will be able to see which side was right
in that strange civil war, where both so sincerely claimed to be Scriptural.
It may be wondered why we spend so much argument on comparing the attempt to force
Charles II into the Solemn League and Covenant with the impious treaty of Judah with the
heathen. But the argument has not been wasted, if it have shown how even sincere and religious
men may make covenants with death, and even Church creeds and constitutions become beds

15. too short that a man may lie upon them, coverings narrower than that he can wrap himself in
them. Not once or twice has it happened that an old and hallowed constitution has become, in
the providence of God, unfit for the larger life of a people or of a Church, and yet is clung to by
parties in that Church or people from motives of theological pedantry or ecclesiastical
cowardice. Sooner or later a crisis is sure to arrive, in which the defective creed has to match
itself against some interest of justice; and then endless compromises have to be entertained, that
discover themselves perilously like "bargains with hell." If we of this generation have to make a
public application of the twenty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, it lies in this direction. There are few
things, to which his famous proverb of the short bed can be applied more aptly, than to the
attempt to fasten down the religious life and thought of the present age too rigorously upon a
creed of the fashion of two or three hundred years ago.
But Isaiah’s words have wider application. Short of faith as he exemplified it, there is no
possibility for the spirit of man to be free from uneasiness. It is so all along the scale of human
endeavour. No power of patience or of hope is his, who cannot imagine possibilities of truth
outside his own opinions, nor trust a justice larger than his private rights. It is here very often
that the real test of our faith meets us. If we seek to fit life solely to the conception of our
privileges, if in the preaching of our opinions no mystery of higher truth awe us at least into
reverence and caution; then, whatever religious creeds we profess, we are not men of faith, but
shall surely inherit the bitterness and turmoil that are the portion of unbelievers. If we make it
the chief aim of our politics to drive cheap bargains for our trade or to be consistent to party or
class interests; if we trim our conscience to popular opinion: if we sell our honesty in business or
our love in marriage, that we may be comfortable in the world; then, however firmly we be
established in reputation or in welfare, we have given our spiritual nature a support utterly
inadequate to its needs, and we shall never find rest. Sooner or later, a man must feel the pinch
of having cut his life short of the demands of conscience. Only a generous loyalty to her decrees
will leave him freedom of heart and room for his arm to swing. Nor will any philosophy, however
comprehensive, nor poetic fancy, however elastic, be able without the complement of faith to
arrange, to account for, or to console us for, the actual facts of experience. It is only belief in the
God of Isaiah, a true and loving God, omnipotent Ruler of our life, that can bring us peace.
There was never a sorrow that did not find explanation in that, never a tired thought that would
not cling to it. There are no interests so scattered nor energies so far-reaching that there is not
return and rest for them under the shadow of His wings. "He that believeth shall not make
haste." "Be still," says a psalm of the same date as Isaiah-"Be still, and know that I am God."
IV. THE ALMIGHTY: THE ALL-METHODICAL
(Isa_28:23-29)
The patience of faith, which Isaiah has so nobly preached, he now proceeds to vindicate by
reason. But the vindication implies that his audience are already in another mood. From
confidence in their clever diplomacy, heedless of the fact that God has His own purposes
concerning them, they have swung round to despair before His judgments. Their despair,
however, is due to the same fault as their careless confidence-the forgetfulness that God works
by counsel and method. Even a calamity, so universal and extreme as that of whose certainty the
prophet has now convinced them, has its measure and its term. To persuade the crushed and
superstitious Jews of this, Isaiah employs a parable. "You know," he says, "the husbandman.
Have you ever seen him keep on ‘harrowing and breaking the clods of his land’ for mere sport,
and without farther intention? Does not the harrowing time lead to the sowing time? Or again,
when he threshes his crops, does he thresh for ever? Is threshing the end he has in view? Look,
how he varies the rigour of his instrument by the kind of plant he threshes. For delicate plants,
like fitches and cummin, he does not use the ‘threshing sledge’ with the sharp teeth, or the
lumbering roller, but the fitches are beaten out with a staff and the cummin with a rod.’ And in

16. the case of ‘bread corn,’ which needs ‘his roller and horses,’ he does not use these upon it till it is
all ‘crushed to dust."’ The application of this parable is very evident. If the husbandman be so
methodical and careful, shall the God who taught him not also be so? If the violent treatment of
land and fruits be so measured and adapted for their greater fruitfulness and purity, ought we
not to trust God to have the same intentions in His violent treatment of His people? Isaiah here
returns to his fundamental gospel: that the Almighty is the All-methodical, too. Men forget this.
In their times of activity they think God indifferent; they are too occupied with their own
schemes for shaping life, to imagine that He has any. In days of suffering, again, when disaster
bursts, they conceive of God only as force and vengeance. Yet, says Isaiah, "Jehovah of hosts is
wonderful in counsel, and excellent in that sort of wisdom which causes things to succeed." This
last word of the chapter is very expressive. It literally means furtherance, help, salvation, and
then the true wisdom or insight which ensures these: the wisdom which carries things through.
It splendidly sums up Isaiah’s gospel to the Jews, cowering like dogs before the coming calamity:
God is not mere force or vengeance. His judgments are not chaos. But "He is wonderful in
counsel," and all His ways have "furtherance" or "salvation" for their end.
We have said this is one of the finest prophecies of Isaiah. His political foresight was admirable,
when he alone of his countrymen predicted the visitation of Assyria upon Judah. But now, when
all are convinced of it, how still more wonderful does he seem facing that novel disaster, with the
whole world’s force behind it, and declaring its limit. He has not the temptation, so strong in
prophets of judgment, to be a mere disaster-monger, and leave judgment on the horizon
unrelieved. Nor is he afraid, as other predicters of evil have been, of the monster he has
summoned to the land. The secret of this is that from the first he predicted the Assyrian
invasion, not out of any private malice nor merely by superior political foresight, but because he
knew-and knew, as he tells us, by the inspiration of God’s own Spirit-that God required such an
instrument to punish the unrighteousness of Judah. If the enemy was summoned by God at the
first, surely till the last the enemy shall be in God’s hand.
To this enemy we are now to see Isaiah turn with the same message he has delivered to the men
of Jerusalem.
10. MACLAREN, “THE JUDGMENT OF DRUNKARDS AND MOCKERS
This prophecy probably falls in the first years of Hezekiah, when Samaria still stood, and the
storm of war was gathering black in the north. The portion included in the text predicts the fall
of Samaria (Isa_28:1-6) and then turns to Judah, which is guilty of the same sins as the
northern capital, and adds to them mockery of the prophet’s message. Isaiah speaks with fiery
indignation and sharp sarcasm. His words are aflame with loathing of the moral corruption of
both kingdoms, and he fastens on the one common vice of drunkenness-not as if it were the only
sin, but because it shows in the grossest form the rottenness underlying the apparent beauty.
I. The woe on Samaria (Isa_28:1-6). Travellers are unanimous in their raptures over the
fertility and beauty of the valley in which Samaria stood, perched on its sunny, fruitful hill, amid
its vineyards. The situation of the city naturally suggests the figure which regards it as a
sparkling coronet or flowery wreath, twined round the brows of the hill; and that poetical
metaphor is the more natural, since revellers were wont to twist garlands in their hair, when
they reclined at their orgies. The city is ‘the crown of pride’-that is, the object of boasting and
foolish confidence-and is also ‘the fading flower of his sparkling ornament’; that is, the flower
which is the ornament of Ephraim, but is destined to fade.
The picture of the city passes into that of the drunken debauch, where the chief men of Samaria
sprawl, ‘smitten down’ by wine, and with the innocent flowers on their hot temples drooping in
the fumes of the feast. But bright and sunny as the valley is, glittering in the light as the city sits

17. on her hill, careless and confident as the revellers are, a black cloud lies on the horizon, and one
of the terrible sudden storms which such lands know comes driving up the valley. ‘The Lord hath
a mighty and strong one’-the conqueror from the north, who is God’s instrument, though he
knows it not.
The swift, sudden, irresistible onslaught of the Assyrian is described, in harmony with the figure
of the flowery coronal, as a tempest which beats down the flowers and flings the sodden crown
to the ground. The word rendered ‘tempest’ is graphic, meaning literally a ‘downpour.’ First
comes hail, which batters the flowers to shreds; then the effect of the storm is described as
‘destruction,’ and then the hurrying words turn back to paint the downpour of rain, ‘mighty’
from its force in falling, and ‘overflowing’ from its abundance, which soon sets all the fields
swimming with flood water. What chance has a poor twist of flowers in such a storm? Its beauty
will be marred, and all the petals beaten off, and nothing remains but that it should be trampled
into mud. The rush of the prophet’s denunciation is swift and irresistible as the assault it
describes, and it flashes from one metaphor to another without pause. The fertility of the valley
of Samaria shapes the figures. As the picture of the flowery chaplet, so that which follows of the
early fig, is full of local colour. A fig in June is a delicacy, which is sure to be plucked and eaten
as soon as seen. Such a dainty, desirable morsel will Samaria be, as sweet and as little satisfying
to the all-devouring hunger of the Assyrian.
But storms sweep the air clear, and everything will not go down before this one. The flower
fadeth, but there is a chaplet of beauty which men may wreathe round their heads, which shall
bloom for ever. All sensuous enjoyment has its limits in time, as well as in nobleness and
exquisiteness; but when it is all done with, the beauty and festal ornament which truly crowns
humanity shall smell sweet and blossom. The prophecy had regard simply to the issue of the
historical disaster to which it pointed, and it meant that, after the storm of Assyrian conquest,
there would still be, for the servants of God, the residue of the people, both in Israel and in
Judah, a fuller possession of the blessings which descend on the men who make God their
portion. But the principle involved is for ever true. The sweeping away of the perishable does
draw true hearts nearer to God.
So the two halves of this prophecy give us eternal truths as to the certain destruction awaiting
the joys of sense, and the permanence of the beauty and strength which belong to those who
take God for their portion.
Drunkenness seems to have been a national sin in Israel; for Micah rebukes it as vehemently as
Isaiah, and it is a clear bit of Christian duty in England to-day to ‘set the trumpet to thy mouth
and show the people’ this sin. But the lessons of the prophecy are wider than the specific form of
evil denounced. All setting of affection and seeking of satisfaction in that which, in all the pride
of its beauty, is ‘a fading flower,’ is madness and sin. Into every life thus turned to the perishable
will come the crash of the destroying storm, the mutterings of which might reach the ears of the
feasters, if they were not drunk with the fumes of their deceiving delights. Only one kind of life
has its roots in that which abides, and is safe from tempest and change. Amaranthine flowers
bloom only in heaven, and must be brought thence, if they are to garland earthly foreheads. If
we take God for ours, then whatever tempests may howl, and whatever fragile though fragrant
joys may be swept away, we shall find in Him all that the world ‘fails to give to its votaries. He is
‘a crown of glory’ and ‘a diadem of beauty.’ Our humanity is never so fair as when it is made
beautiful by the possession of Him. All that sense vainly seeks in earth, faith finds in God. Not
only beauty, but ‘a spirit of judgment,’ in its narrower sense and in its widest, is breathed into
those to whom God is ‘the master light of all their seeing’; and, yet more, He is strength to all
who have to fight. Thus the close union of trustful souls with God, the actual inspiration of these,
and the perfecting of their nature from communion with God, are taught us in the great words,

18. which tell how beauty, justice, and strength are all given in the gift of Jehovah Himself to His
people.
II. The prophet turns to Judah (Isa_28:7-13), and charges them with the same disgusting
debauchery. His language is vehement in its loathing, and describes the filthy orgies of those
who should have been the guides of the people with almost painful realism. Note how the words
‘reel’ and ‘stagger’ are repeated, and also the words ‘wine’ and ‘strong drink.’ We see the priests’
and prophets’ unsteady gait, and then they ‘stumble’ or fall. There they lie amid the filth, like
hogs in a sty. It is very coarse language, but fine words are the Devil’s veils for coarse sins; and it
is needful sometimes to call spades spades, and not to be ashamed to tell men plainly how ugly
are the vices which they are not ashamed to commit. No doubt some of the drunken priests and
false prophets in Jerusalem thought Isaiah extremely vulgar and indelicate, in talking about
staggering teachers and tables swimming in ‘vomit.’ But he had to speak out. So deep was the
corruption that the officials were tipsy even when engaged in their official duties, the prophets
reeled while they were seeing visions; the judges could not sit upright even when pronouncing
judgment.
Isa_28:9-10 are generally taken as a sarcastic quotation of the drunkards’ scoffs at the prophet.
They might be put in inverted commas. Their meaning is, ‘Does he take us grave and reverend
seigniors, priests and prophets, to be babies just weaned, that he pesters us with these
monotonous petty preachings, fit only for the nursery, which he calls his “message"?’ In
Isa_28:10, the original for ‘precept upon precept,’ etc., is a series of short words, which may be
taken as reproducing the ‘babbling tones of the drunken mockers.’
The loose livers of all generations talk in the same fashion about the stern morality which
rebukes their vice. They call it weak, commonplace, fit for children, and they pretend that they
despise it. They are much too enlightened for such antiquated teaching. Old women and
children may take it in, but men of the world, who have seen life, and know what is what, are not
to be fooled so. ‘What will this babbler say?’ was asked by the wise men of Athens, who were but
repeating the scoffs of the prophets and priests of Jerusalem, and the same jeers are bitter in the
mouth of many a profligate man to-day. It is the fate of all strict morality to be accounted
childish by the people whom it inconveniently condemns.
In Isa_28:11 and onwards the prophet speaks. He catches up the mockers’ words, and retorts
them. They have scoffed at his message as if it were stammering speech. They shall hear another
kind of stammerers when the fierce invaders’ harsh and unintelligible language commands
them. The reason why these foreign voices would have authority, was the national disregard of
God’s voice. ‘Ye would not hear’ Him when, by His prophet, He spoke gracious invitations to
rest, and to give the nation rest, in obedience and trust. Therefore they shall hear the battle-cry
of the conqueror, and have to obey orders spoken in a barbarous tongue.
Of course, the language meant is the Assyrian, which, though cognate with Hebrew, is so unlike
as to be unintelligible to the people. But is not the threat the statement of a great truth always
being fulfilled towards the disobedient? If we will not listen to that loving Voice which calls us to
rest, we shall be forced to listen to the harsh and strident tones of conquering enemies who
command us to slavish toil. If we will not be guided by His eye and voice, we shall be governed
by whip and bridle. Our choice is either to hearken to the divine call, which is loving and gentle,
and invites to deep repose springing from faith, or to have to hear the voice of the taskmasters.
The monotony of despised moral and religious teaching shall give place to a more terrible
monotony, even that of continuous judgments.
‘The mills of God grind slowly.’ Bit by bit, with gradual steps, with dismal persistence, like the
slow drops on the rock, the judgments of God trickle out on the mocking heart. It takes a long
time for a child to learn a pageful when he gets his lesson a sentence at a time. So slowly do His

19. chastisements fall on men who have despised the continuous messages of His love. The word of
the Lord, which was laughed at when it clothed itself in a prophet’s speech, will be heard in more
formidable shape, when it is wrapped in the long-drawn-out miseries of years of bondage. The
warning is as needful for us as for these drunken priests and scornful rulers. The principle
embodied is true in this day as it was then, and we too have to choose between serving God in
gladness, hearkening to the voice of His word, and so finding rest to our souls, and serving the
world, the flesh, and the devil, and so experiencing the perpetual dropping of the fiery rain of
His judgments.
11. MEYER, “THE DECAY OF AN INTEMPERATE PEOPLE
Isa_28:1-13
A new series of prophecies begins here and extends to Isa_32:20. Samaria is described as a
faded crown or garland on the nation’s head because it was disgraced by the national
drunkenness. See Amo_4:1. So corrupted was she by strong drink and its attendant evils that the
Assyrian invader would plunder her as a man gathers ripe figs. But to Judah, that is, the
remnant, the Lord would be a crown or garland, not of pride but of glory. His beauty would not
be as a fading flower, but a lasting diadem. What wine is to the sensuous man, that God is to the
spiritual. See Eph_5:18. You that have to form right judgments, and you that have to turn the
battle from the gate, will find all your need in Him. In Isa_28:7-8 we have a terrible picture of
widespread effects of strong drink; and in Isa_28:9-10 the prophet recites the ribald remarks
addressed to himself by the roisterers of those evil days. He replies that God would Himself
answer them by the stern accents of the Assyrian tongue, which would sound like stammering,
Isa_28:11; and this would befall them because they would not need the wooing accents of His
love, Isa_28:12.
2
See, the Lord has one who is powerful and strong.
Like a hailstorm and a destructive wind,
like a driving rain and a flooding downpour,
he will throw it forcefully to the ground.
1.BARNES, “Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one - The Hebrew of this
passage is, ‘Lo! there is to the Lord (‫לאדני‬ la'donay) mighty and strong.’ Lowth renders it,
‘Behold the mighty one, the exceedingly strong one,’

20. And supposes that it means the Lord himself. It is evident, however, that something must be
understood as being that which the Lord ‘hath,’ for the Hebrew properly implies that there is
something strong and mighty which is under his control, and with which, as with a tempest, he
will sweep away and destroy Ephraim. Jarchi supposes that ‫רוח‬ ruach (“wind”) is understood;
Kimchi thinks that the word is ‫יום‬ yom (“day”); others believe that ‫חיל‬ chayil (“an army”) is
understood. But I think the obvious interpretation is to refer it to the Assyrian king, as the agent
by which Yahweh would destroy Samaria 2Ki_17:3-6. This power was entirely under the
direction of Yahweh, and would be employed by him in accomplishing his purpose on that guilty
people (compare the notes at Isa_10:5-6).
As a tempest of hail - A storm of hail is a most striking representation of the desolation that
is produced by the ravages of an invading army (compare Job_27:21; the note at Isa_30:30; also
Hos_13:15).
A flood of mighty waters - This is also a striking description of the devastating effects of an
invading army (compare Psa_90:5; Jer_46:7-8)
Shall cast down to the earth - To cast it to the earth means that it should be entirely
humbled and destroyed (see the note at Isa_25:12).
With the hand - Septuagint: βίᇮ bia - ‘Force,’ ‘violence.’ This is its meaning here; as if it
were taken in the hand, like a cup, and dashed indignantly to the ground.
2. CLARKE, “Behold the Lord hath a mighty and strong one “Behold the mighty
one, the exceedingly strong one” - ‫אמץ‬‫לאדני‬ ammits ladonai, fortis Domino, i.e.,
fortissimmus, a Hebraism. For ‫לאדנ‬‫י‬ ladonai, to the Lord, thirty-eight MSS. Of Dr. Kennicott’s
and many of De Rossi’s, with some of my own, and two editions, read ‫ליהוה‬ laihovah, to Jehovah.
3. GILL, “Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one,.... That is, a powerful king,
with a mighty army, meaning Shalmaneser king of Assyria; whom the Lord had at his beck and
command, and could use at his pleasure, as his instrument, to bring down the towering pride of
Ephraim, and chastise him for his sensuality:
which as a tempest of hail; that beats down herbs and plants, and branches of trees, and
men and beasts:
and a destroying storm; which carries all before it, blows down houses and trees, and makes
terrible devastation wherever it comes:
as a flood of mighty waters overflowing; whose torrent is so strong there is no stopping it:
so this mighty and powerful prince
shall cast down to the earth with the hand; the crown of pride, the people of Israel, and
the king of it; he shall take the crown from his head, and cast it to the ground with a strong
hand, as the Jews interpret it, with great violence; or very easily, with one hand, as it were,
without any trouble at all. The Targum is,

21. "so shall people come against them, and remove them out of their own land into another land,
because of the sins which were in their hands;''
4. HENRY, “The justice of God in taking away their plenty from them, which they thus
abused. Their glorious beauty, the plenty they were proud of, is but a fading flower; it is meat
that perishes. The most substantial fruits, if God blast them and blow upon them, are but fading
flowers, Isa_28:1. God can easily take away their corn in the season thereof (Hos_2:9), and
recover locum vastatum - ground that has been alienated and has run to waste, those goods of
his which they prepared for Baal. God has an officer ready to make a seizure for him, has one at
his beck, a mighty and strong one, who is able to do the business, even the king of Assyria, who
shall cast down to the earth with the hand, shall easily and effectually, and with the turn of a
hand, destroy all that which they are proud of and pleased with, Isa_28:2. He shall throw it
down to the ground, to be broken to pieces with a strong hand, with a hand that they cannot
oppose. Then the crown of pride, and the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under foot
(Isa_28:3); they shall lie exposed to contempt, and shall not be able to recover themselves.
Drunkards, in their folly, are apt to talk proudly, and vaunt themselves most when they most
shame themselves; but they thereby render themselves the more ridiculous. The beauty of their
valleys, which they gloried in, will be, (1.) Like a fading flower (as before, Isa_28:1); it will
wither of itself, and has in itself the principles of its own corruption; it will perish in time by its
own moth and rust. (2.) Like the hasty fruit, which, as soon as it is discovered, is plucked and
eaten up; so the wealth of this world, besides that it is apt to decay of itself, is subject to be
devoured by others as greedily as the first-ripe fruit, which is earnestly desired, Mic_7:1. Thieves
break through and steal. The harvest which the worldling is proud of the hungry eat up
(Job_5:5); no sooner do they see the prey but they catch at it, and swallow up all they can lay
their hands on. It is likewise easily devoured, as that fruit which, being ripe before it has grown,
is very small, and is soon eaten up; and there being little of it, and that of little worth, it is not
reserved, but used immediately.
5. JAMISON, “strong one — the Assyrian (Isa_10:5).
cast down — namely, Ephraim (Isa_28:1) and Samaria, its crown.
with ... hand — with violence (Isa_8:11).
6. K&D, “In the next three vv. the hoi is expanded. “Behold, the Lord holds a strong and
mighty thing like a hailstorm, a pestilent tempest; like a storm of mighty overflowing waters,
He casts down to the earth with almighty hand. With feet they tread down the proud crown of
the drunken of Ephraim. And it happens to the fading flower of its splendid ornament, which is
upon the head of the luxuriant valley, as to an early fig before it is harvest, which whoever sees
it looks at, and it is no sooner in his hand than he swallows it.” “A strong and mighty thing:”
‫י‬ ִ ፍְ‫ו‬ ‫ק‬ָ‫ז‬ ָ‫ח‬ we have rendered in the neuter (with the lxx and Targum) rather than in the masculine,
as Luther does, although the strong and mighty thing which the Lord holds in readiness is no
doubt the Assyrian. He is simply the medium of punishment in the hand of the Lord, which is
called yad absolutely, because it is absolute in power - as it were, the hand of all hands. This
hand hurls Samaria to the ground (on the expression itself, compare Isa_25:12; Isa_26:5), so

22. that they tread the proud crown to pieces with their feet (teramasnah, the more pathetic plural
form, instead of the singular terames; Ges. 47, Anm. 3, and Caspari on Oba_1:13). The noun sa‛ar,
which is used elsewhere in the sense of shuddering, signifies here, like ‫ה‬ ָ‫ר‬ ַ‫ע‬ ְ‫,ס‬ an awful tempest;
and when connected with ‫ב‬ ֶ‫ט‬ ֶ‫,ק‬ a tempest accompanied with a pestilential blast, spreading
miasma. Such destructive power is held by the absolute hand. It is soon all over then with the
splendid flower that has already begun to fade ‫ל‬ ֵ‫ּב‬‫נ‬ ‫ת‬ ַ‫יצ‬ ִ‫,צ‬ like ‫ן‬ ָ‫ט‬ ָ ַ‫ה‬ ‫י‬ ֵ‫ל‬ ְⅴ in Isa_22:24). It happens to
it as to a bikkurah (according to the Masora, written with mappik here, as distinguished from
Hos_9:10, equivalent to ke
bhikkurathah; see Job_11:9, “like an early fig of this valley;” according
to others, it is simply euphonic). The gathering of figs takes place about August. Now, if any one
sees a fig as early as June, he fixes his eyes upon it, and hardly touches it with his hand before he
swallows it, and that without waiting to masticate it long. Like such a dainty bit will the
luxuriant Samaria vanish. The fact that Shalmanassar, or his successor Sargon, did not conquer
Samaria till after the lapse of three years (2Ki_18:10), does not detract from the truth of the
prophecy; it is enough that both the thirst of the conqueror and the utter destruction of Samaria
answered to it.
7. PULPIT, “The Lord hath a mighty and strong one. God has in reserve a mighty power, which he will
let loose upon Samaria. The wicked are "his sword" (Psa_17:13), and are employed to carry out his
sentences. In the present ease the "mighty and strong one" is the Assyrian power. As a tempest of
hail, etc. The fearfully devastating force of an Assyrian invasion is set forth under three distinct images—
a hailstorm, a furious tempest of wind, and a violent inundation—as though so only could its full horror be
depicted. War is always a horrible scourge; but in ancient times, and with a people so cruel as the
Assyrians, it was a calamity exceeding in terribleness the utmost that the modern reader can conceive. It
involved the wholesale burning of cities and villages, the wanton destruction of trees and crops, the
slaughter of thousands in battles and sieges, the subsequent massacre of hundreds in cold blood, the
plunder of all classes, and the deportation of tens of thousands of captives, who were carried into
hopeless servitude in a strange land. With the hand; i.e. "with force," "violently." So in Assyrian
constantly (compare the use of the Greek χερί ).
8. CALVIN, “2.Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one. This may refer to the Assyrians, as if he
had said, that they will be ready at God’ command to fight under his authority, as soon as they shall be
called. Yet I prefer to take it without a substantive, to mean either “ staff,” or some other instrument, by
which the Lord will cast them down from this lofty pride.
As a deluge of hail. He compares it to “ deluge” or to “” by which both herbs and flowers are thrown down,

23. and all the beauty of the earth is marred. Thus he continues the metaphor of the “ flower,” which he had
introduced at the beginning of the chapter; for nothing can be more destructive to flowers than a heavy
shower or “” He makes use of the demonstrative particle ‫,הנה‬ (hinnē,) behold; because wicked men are
not moved by any threatenings, and therefore he shews that he does not speak of what is doubtful, or
conjecture at random, but foretells those things which will immediately take place.
Casting them down with the hand to the earth. ‫,ביד‬ (bĕā,) which I have translated “ the hand,” is translated
by Jerome, “ spacious country,” which does not agree with the words. Others take it for “” so as to mean a
violent casting down. But the plain meaning appears to me to be, that the glory and splendor of the
Israelites will be laid low, as if one threw down a drunk man “ the hand.” The same statement is confirmed
by him in the third verse.
3
That wreath, the pride of Ephraim’s drunkards,
will be trampled underfoot.
1.PULPIT, “The crown of pride, the drunkards; rather, of the drunkards (comp. Isa_28:1). The "crown
of pride" is scarcely "Samaria," as Delitzsch supposes, it is rather the self-complacent and boastful spirit
of the Israelite people, which will be "trodden under foot" by the Assyrians.
2. CLARKE, “The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim “The proud crown of
the drunkards of Ephraim” - I read ‫עטרות‬ ataroth, crowns, plural, to agree with the verb
‫תרמסנה‬ teramasnah, “shall be trodden down.”
3. GILL, “The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under
feet. Not only cast down with the hand, but trampled upon with the feet; showing their utter
destruction, and the contempt with which they should be used; which, with their character, is
repeated, to point out their sins, the cause of it, to denote the certainty of it, and that it might be
taken notice of.
4. JAMISON, “crown ... the drunkards — rather, “the crown of the drunkards.”

24. 5. PULPIT. “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" (Deu_21:20, Deu_21:21).
Nabal's drunkenness and churlishness together caused him to be "smitten by the Lord that he died'
(1Sa_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" (Pro_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" (1Co_6:10), and bidden, "If any man that is called a
brother be a drunkard, with such a one, no, not to eat" (1Co_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.,' Amo_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. Isa_22:13; Pro_31:6, Pro_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.
4
That fading flower, his glorious beauty,
set on the head of a fertile valley,
will be like figs ripe before harvest—
as soon as people see them and take them in hand,
they swallow them.

25. 1.BARNES, “As the hasty fruit before the summer - The word rendered ‘hasty fruit’
(‫בכוּרה‬ bikurah); in Arabic, bokkore; in Spanish, albacore), denotes the “early fig.” this ripens in
June; the common fig does not ripen until August. Shaw, in his “Travels,” p. 370, says: ‘No
sooner does the “boccore” (the early fig) draw near to perfection in the middle or latter end of
June, than the “kermez” or summer fig begins to be formed, though it rarely ripens before
August, about which time the same tree frequently throws out a third crop, or the winter fig, as
we may call it. This is usually of a much longer shape and darker complexion than the kermez,
hanging and ripening on the tree after the leaves are shed; and provided the winter be mild and
temperate it is gathered as a delicious morsel in the spring.’ Robinson (George), (“Travels in
Palestine and Syria,” vol. i. p. 354), says, ‘The fig tree, which delights in a rocky and parched soil,
and is therefore often found in barren spots where nothing else will grow, is very common in
Palestine and the East. The fruit is of two kinds, the “boccore” and the “kermouse.” The black
and white boccore, or early fig, is produced in May; but the kermouse, or the fig properly so
called, which is preserved and exported to Europe, is rarely ripe before September.’ Compare
Hos_9:10. The phrase ‘before the summer’ means before the heat of the summer, when the
common fig was usually ripe. The idea here is this, the early fig would be plucked and eaten with
great greediness. So the city of Samaria would be seized upon and destroyed by its enemies.
Which when he that looketh upon it seeth ... - That is, as soon as he sees it he plucks it,
and eats it at once. He does not lay it up for future use, but as soon as he has it in his hand he
devours it. So soon as the Assyrian should see Samaria he would rush upon it, and destroy it. It
was usual for conquerors to preserve the cities which they took in war for future use, and to
make them a part of the strength or ornament of their kingdom. But Samaria was to be at once
destroyed. Its inhabitants were to be carried away, and it would be demolished as greedily as a
hungry man plucks and eats the first fig that ripens on the tree.
2. CLARKE, “The hasty fruit before the summer “The early fruit before the
summer” - “No sooner doth the boccore, (the early fig), draw near to perfection in the middle
or latter end of June, than the kermez or summer fig begins to be formed, though it rarely ripens
before August; about which time the same tree frequently throws out a third crop, or the winter
fig, as we may call it. This is usually of a much longer shape and darker complexion than the
kermez, hanging and ripening upon the tree even after the leaves are shed; and, provided the
winter proves mild and temperate, is gathered as a delicious morsel in the spring; “Shaw,
Travels, p. 370, fol. The image was very obvious to the inhabitants of Judea and the neighboring
countries, and is frequently applied by the prophets to express a desirable object; by none more
elegantly than by Hos_9:10 : -
“Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel;
Like the first ripe fig in her prime, I saw your fathers.”
Which when he that looketh upon it seeth “Which whoso seeth, he plucketh it
immediately” - For ‫יראה‬ yireh, which with ‫הראה‬ haroeh makes a miserable tautology, read, by a
transposition of a letter, ‫יארה‬ yoreh; a happy conjecture of Houbigant. The image expresses in
the strongest manner the great ease with which the Assyrians shall take the city and the whole
kingdom, and the avidity with which they shall seize the rich prey without resistance.

26. 3. GILL, “And the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley,.... Meaning
the riches and fruitfulness of the ten tribes, and especially of Samaria the head of them:
shall be a fading flower; as before declared, Isa_28:1 and here repeated to show the certainty
of it, and to awaken their attention to it:
and as the hasty fruit before the summer; the first ripe fruit, that which is ripe before the
summer fruits in common are. The Septuagint render it the first ripe fig; and so the Targum and
Aben Ezra:
which when he that looketh upon it seeth it; that it is goodly and desirable, and so gathers
it, Mic_7:1,
while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up; and as soon as he has got it into his hand, he
cannot keep it there to look at, or forbear eating it, but greedily devours it, and swallows it down
at once; denoting what a desirable prey the ten tribes would be to the Assyrian monarch, and
how swift, sudden, and inevitable, would be their destruction.
4. PULPIT, “And the glorious beauty, etc. Translate, And the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which
is on the head of the fat valley, shall be like an early fig (that comes) before the harvest. Such an "early
fig" is a tempting delicacy, devoured as soon as seen (comp. Hos_9:10; Nah_3:12; Jer_24:2, etc.). The
"beauty" of Samaria would tempt the Assyrians to desire it so soon as they saw it, and would rouse an
appetite which would be content with nothing less than the speedy absorption of the coveted morsel.
Samaria's siege, once begun, was pressed without intermission, and lasted less than three years
(2Ki_18:9, 2Ki_18:10)—a short space compared to that of other sieges belonging to about the same
period; e.g. that of Ashdod, besieged twenty-nine years; that of Tyre, besieged thirteen years ('Ancient
Monarchies,' vol. 3.492).
5. JAMISON, “Rather, “the fading flower, their glorious beauty (Isa_28:1), which is on the
head of the fat (fertile) valley, shall be as the early fig” [G. V. Smith]. Figs usually ripened in
August; but earlier ones (Hebrew, bikkurah, Spanish bokkore) in June, and were regarded as a
delicacy (Jer_24:2; Hos_9:10; Mic_7:1).
while it is yet — that is, immediately, without delay; describing the eagerness of the
Assyrian Shalmaneser, not merely to conquer, but to destroy utterly Samaria; whereas other
conquered cities were often spared.
6. CALVIN, “4.And the excellence of its glory. He repeats nearly the same words; for we know how
difficult it is to terrify and humble those who have been blinded by prosperity, and whose eyes success

27. covers in the same manner that fatness would. As Dionysius the Second, (213) in consequence of gorging
himself at unseasonable banquets, was seized with such blindness that he constantly stumbled, so
pleasures and luxuries blind the minds of men in such a manner that they no longer know either God or
themselves. The Prophet therefore inculcates the same truth frequently on the minds of men who were
stupid and amazed, that they might understand what would otherwise have appeared to them to be
incredible. (214)
As the hasty fruit before the summer. He now illustrates the subject by another metaphor exceedingly
beautiful and appropriate; for the first-ripe fruits are indeed highly commended, because they go before
others, and hold out the expectation of the rest of the produce; but they last but a short time, and cannot
be preserved, for they are quickly eaten up either by pregnant women, or by children, or by men who do
not make a proper selection of their food. He says that the happiness of the Israelites will be of that sort,
because their flourishing prosperity will not be of long duration, but will be swallowed up in a moment.
What Isaiah declared about the kingdom of Israel, applies also to the whole world. By their ingratitude
men prevent all the goodness which the Lord has bestowed on them from reaching maturity; for we abuse
his blessings and corrupt them by our wickedness. The consequence is, that hasty and short-lived fruits
are produced, which could not yield to us continual nourishment.
5
In that day the LORD Almighty
will be a glorious crown,
a beautiful wreath
for the remnant of his people.
1.BARNES, “In that day - This verse commences a new subject, and affirms that while the
kingdom of Israel should be destroyed, the kingdom of Judah would be preserved, and restored
(compare Isa. 7–9)
Be for a crown of glory - He shall reign there as its king, and he shall guard and defend the
remnant of his people there. This reign of Yahweh shall be to them better than palaces, towers,
walls, and fruitful fields, and shall be a more glorious ornament than the proud city of Samaria
was to the kingdom of Israel.
And for a diadem of beauty - A beautiful garland. The phrase stands opposed to the
wreath of flowers or the diadem which was represented Isa_28:1, Isa_28:3 as adorning the

28. kingdom and capital of Israel. Yahweh and his government would be to them their chief glory
and ornament.
Unto the residue of his people - To the kingdom of Judah, comprising the two tribes of
Judah and Benjamin. This doubtless refers to the comparatively prosperous and happy times of
the reign of Hezekiah.
2. CLARKE, “In that day - Thus far the prophecy relates to the Israelites, and manifestly
denounces their approaching destruction by Shalmaneser. Here it turns to the two tribes of
Judah and Benjamin, the remnant of God’s people who were to continue a kingdom after the
final captivity of the Israelites. It begins with a favorable prognostication of their affairs under
Hezekiah; but soon changes to reproofs and threatenings for their intemperance, disobedience,
and profaneness.
Jonathan’s Targum on this verse is worthy of notice: “In that time Messiah, the Lord of hosts
‫משיחא‬‫דיי‬‫צבאות‬ meshicha dayai tsebaoth, shall be a crown of joy and a diadem of praise to the
residue of his people.” Kimchi says the rabbins in general are of this opinion. Here then the
rabbins, and their most celebrated Targum, give the incommunicable name, ‫יהוה‬‫צבאות‬ Yehovah
tsebaoth, the Lord of hosts, to our ever blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
3. GILL, “In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory,.... Or, "glorious
crown" (p); surrounding, adorning, and protecting his people; granting them his presence;
giving them his grace, and large measures of it; causing them to live soberly, righteously, and
godly: this stands opposed to "the crown of pride" before mentioned, and refers to the time
when that should be trampled under foot, or when the ten tribes should be carried into captivity,
which was in the sixth year of Hezekiah's reign, 2Ki_18:10 at which time, and in whose reign, as
well as in the reign of Josiah, this prophecy had its accomplishment:
and for a diadem of beauty: or, "a beautiful diadem" (q); the same as expressed by different
words, for the confirmation and illustration of it:
unto the residue of his people; the Arabic version adds, "in Egypt"; the people that
remained there, when the others were carried captive, but without any foundation. Jarchi
interprets it of the righteous that were left in it, in Samaria, or in Ephraim, in the ten tribes
before spoken of; but it is to be understood, as Kimchi observes, of the other two tribes, Judah
and Benjamin, which remained in their own land, when others were carried captive, to whom
God gave his favours, spiritual and temporal, in the times of Hezekiah and Josiah; and especially
the former is meant, and who was a type of Christ, to whom this passage may be applied, who is
the glory of his people Israel; and so the Targum paraphrases it,
"in that day shall the Messiah of the Lord of hosts be for a crown of joy;''
and Kimchi says their Rabbins expound this of the King Messiah, in time to come, when both
the kingly and priestly glory should be restored; the one being signified by the "crown of glory",
the other by the "diadem of beauty".