And if one look unto the land— Isaiah here closes this prophesy with a strong and eloquent description of the consequences of this calamity; setting forth, in the most emphatical terms, the utter confusion, blackness, and desperation of the miserable Jews. See chap. Isaiah 8:22. Nothing can more exactly agree with the state of the Jews after their destruction by Titus, than these words. Vitringa.
REFLECTIONS.—1st, To bring these sinners to a sense of their guilt and danger, they have line upon line, and precept upon precept; every winning means is tried, whether by affecting parables or plain address. The prophet here warns them in poetic measure and parabolic figure. God the Father calls it a song of his well-beloved, of Christ, the beloved Son of the Father, and the object of chief regard and affection to every true believer. Under the parable of a vineyard, the prophet shews,
1. The peculiar care God had taken of them. He had placed his vineyard in a very fruitful hill, where corn, wine, oil, and every earthly blessing abounded; fenced it in from the rest of the world, and protected them night and day by his Almighty power; gathered out the stones thereof, the Canaanites hard and obdurate as stones; planted it with the choicest vine, the seed of Abraham his chosen, and gave them the knowledge of his true religion and pure worship; and he built a tower in the midst of it, the temple where his presence rested in the midst of them, their glory and defence; and also made a wine-press therein, his altar, on which their oblations might be poured out, and their sacrifices offered. Note; In all our privileges and blessings, whether temporal or spiritual, God's hand should be acknowledged by us.
2. The reasonable expectations that he entertained, and the disappointment he met with. He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes; instead of the fruits of righteousness, it produced poisonous principles, hypocritical professions, or openly infamous practices. Note; (1.) If God hath given us outward privileges, he justly expects suitable returns. It is not merely the leaves of profession, nor the green grape of future purposes, but the sound fruit of purity and holiness, that he demands. (2.) When God is said to be disappointed, it means not that he did not foresee or know what would be the event, but this is spoken after the manner of men, according to what we, in a like case, should have expected. (3.) They who produce the wild grapes will set an edge on their own teeth, when God's righteous vengeance awakes to punish the transgressors.
3. He appeals to the men of Judah and Jerusalem. In a case so very evident, he might rest it on their own consciences what more could have been done? what greater advantages, civil and religious, could they desire to have enjoyed? wherefore then have they acted so vile a part, and made such unsuitable returns? Note; (1.) The sinner acts most unreasonably, as well as most ungratefully, and will in the day of God appear without excuse. (2.) When we consider our mercies, who must not tremble for his own unprofitableness? (3.) Though God's patience last long, it will not endure for ever: when the wicked are incorrigible, their ruin is near.
4. God pronounces judgment upon them. I will take away the hedge thereof, remove their defence, and give them for a prey to their enemies; and it shall be eaten up by wild beasts, such as were the Roman soldiers, massacring without pity; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down, when the besiegers entered at the wide breaches, utterly destroying all before them, laying both city and people in the dust. And I will lay it waste, without inhabitants; it shall not be pruned nor digged, neither magistrates, prophets, nor ministers, should any longer attempt to cultivate it; but there shall come up briers and thorns, errors and immoralities, fatal as universal: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it, no dew of heavenly influence shall descend upon them, but they shall be left to their hard and impenitent hearts. Note; The nation and people from whom God in displeasure withdraws his ordinances and his ministers, are in a miserable way indeed.
5. The prophet applies the parable to the Jewish people; the commonwealth of Israel was the vineyard, and the members of it the once pleasant plants, but now become the degenerate plants of a strange vine. The fruits that God expected were, righteousness and judgment, honesty and impartial administration of justice; but, instead thereof, the cry of oppression went up to God, and called down vengeance on the guilty land. Note; Men's sins pass not unnoticed: God sees, and will assuredly visit for these things.
2nd, We have two heavy woes denounced against two crying sins, worldly-mindedness and sensuality; the common iniquities, not of the Jews only, but of our own days, and which will as assuredly now bring down the wrath of God as then.
1. They were insatiable, and ever coveting to enlarge their possessions, to engross every spot around; and, while they might gratify their own covetousness, careless what inconveniencies others suffered thereby, or what injuries they sustained, so that themselves might but be accommodated. Therefore God threatens them by a revelation made to his prophet: Many, or great houses shall be desolate, when their avaricious princes and chief men went into captivity, or were slain by the sword, and none left to dwell in those gorgeous palaces which they with so much solicitude had raised; and, instead of the plenty they expected from joining field to field, such a curse should be upon the land, that ten acres of vineyard should not produce half so many gallons of wine, nor their ground yield scarcely a tenth of the feed they had sown. Note; (1.) They who set their hearts on worldly things are sure to be disappointed. (2.) Though it be no sin to purchase what our neighbour is willing to part with, yet to be ever contriving how to increase our stores, to have a greedy eye on every adjoining field in order to make our own estate more complete; O si angulus ille proximus accedat, qui nunc denormat agellum;* this is to provoke God to smite our possessions with a curse.
*O that yon neighbouring angle, which now spoils the regularity of my field, could be joined to it!
2. They were sunk in sensuality and pleasure. Eager to quench, or rather inflame, their raging thirst, they rose early, and began the day with strong drink, and protracted their carousals till night; flushed with wine, no evil was too much for them; rage, revelling, lust, reigned uncontrolled. Music, prostituted, served to heighten their passions; drunken, lewd, the song, with pleasing sound, stole deeper into the heart; and no place was left for serious recollection—God, his judgments, works and ways, and his Messiah were utterly disregarded. Note; (1.) Drunkenness is not only a vice most brutal and odious in itself, but the pregnant author of every abomination. (2.) The most innocent things are liable to grievous abuse; even music may lull the soul into eternal ruin. (3.) When the mind is enslaved by lust and pleasure, God is forgotten, and every thought of him and his judgments thrust out as irksome intruders. Woe therefore unto them! a judgment near and terrible approaches; therefore my people are gone, or are going into captivity, by the Babylonians first, and afterwards by the Romans, because they have no knowledge, by their sins are become brutish, insensible of their danger, and wilfully blind to their impending ruin: their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst, a just judgment on those who wasted so much in rioting and drunkenness: and dreadful, even to read of, were their sufferings during the sieges they sustained, so far that many of them ate their own children. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, a pit, deep like Tophet, is dug to receive the corpses, perishing so numerously by famine, pestilence, and the sword; or the place of torment yawns to ingulph their polluted souls, and hath opened her mouth without measure, insatiate to devour the wicked; and their glory, the nobles, and their multitude, the populace, or the rulers, though never so many as well as mighty; and their pomp, their rich ones who lived in splendor, and he that rejoiceth in careless gaiety and carousing, shall descend into it, into the grave, or afterward into hell together; where, instead of mirth and riot, their everlasting portion will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Thus shall the mean and mighty perish together, and leave a warning to others, of the danger of their ways. Let the drunkard solemnly peruse this judgment; let the careless pleasure-loving world behold their appointed end, that before it be too late they may consider their ways, and prevent so fearful a destruction.
3. By the execution of such just judgment would God be glorified; his holiness, and hatred of sin, appear; his righteousness in executing vengeance be manifested. Then also shall the lambs feed after their manner, or according as they are led; the lambs of Christ's flock, fed by his word, and walking in all his holy ways; and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat, the Gentiles shall both possess the country of Israel, and partake of those gospel blessings which the proud and self-righteous Jews despised and rejected. Note; (1.) God will not want a people; if some be obstinate, others will hear and obey him. (2.) If sinners will not glorify God's mercy by their humble acceptance of his grace in a Redeemer, they must glorify his justice in the place of torment.
3rdly, Two woes are denounced, but there are others yet to come equally grievous, and all dating their origin from sin, which then was, now is, and ever will be, the cause of all our misery. Happy, did we but take warning by others' woes, and flee their iniquities.
1. Their sins are many.
(1.) They draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart-rope, strain every nerve, use every argument to accomplish their wicked purposes; rushing into temptation, and bent on gratifying their evil desires at all events.
(2.) They defied God, despised the warnings of his prophets, and when his Son appeared, treated his pretensions with contempt. They say, let him make speed, and hasten his work; the men of that generation said, where are the threatened judgments? deriding their prophets who brought the message: the Jews said, if he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross; and the infidel sinner continues thus to treat God's warnings in every age.
(3.) They sought to confound good and evil, wilfully misrepresented truth as falsehood, branding the ways of godliness as miserable, and boasting that the paths of sin are the only substantial bliss. Note; The devil and wicked men ever study to dress up religion and its professors in the most forbidding colours, while every glaring vice is palliated with some soft name, or pleaded for as commendable. Seriousness and singularity are termed pride and moroseness, while a life of dissipation is called the indulgence of a little innocent pleasure; a debauch, the enjoyment of good company; sordid parsimony, frugality; and daring infidelity, free-thinking: but names alter not things, nor change their nature; the sweetness of God's good ways abides the same, and all the glosses of sinners will not prevent their feeling the bitterness of the flames of hell.
(4.) They were proud and self-sufficient, wise in their own eyes, though so infatuated, and prudent in their own sight, valuing themselves on their understanding and management. Thus the Pharisees said, we see, when most deeply their sin remained. Note; Conceit of our own wisdom is among the most fatal of errors.
(5.) They were mighty to drink wine, of strong heads, and gloried in the quantity of liquor they could carry off; and men of strength to mingle strong drink, delighting in being able to drink others down, as it is termed by the debauchees. Note; (1.) They who are mighty to drink wine, shall shortly drink the wine of the wrath of God, unless they repent. (2.) The strength of a man's constitution will not exculpate him from the guilt of drunkenness. To sit long at the cups and delight in them, is as evil as to fill the table with vomit, or stagger in their walk. (3.) They who glory now in their shame, of having out-drank their companions, in hell will find small joy in these exploits.
(6.) They barely perverted justice for gain. Their magistrates justified the wicked for reward, money covered all crimes; while they take away the righteousness of the righteous from him, the poor who cannot bribe, or the upright that dare not, however just their cause, are sure to be cast: for iniquities like these God will visit, and his soul be avenged of such a people as this. Therefore,
2. He denounces their doom. Because they have cast away the law of the Lord, the doctrine sent them by his prophets, and the Gospel preached by his Son, and despised the word of the holy One of Israel, treated it with contempt and disregard; therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so sudden, terrible, resistless, and irreparable, should their destruction be; so that their root shall be as rottenness, and therefore the whole political tree must perish; and their blossom go up as the dust, all their pomp, riches, and glory be dispersed, as withered blossoms before the wind. Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, once his chosen, now apostate from him, and exposed to his wrath. Present judgments were upon them, their princes slain in their streets, and none to bury them; yet these were but the beginning of sorrows: God's anger was far from being turned away, and greater woes were approaching, his hand being stretched out still. He will lift up an ensign, as the signal for marching, to the nations from far; the Romans, composed of various people, and bringing their troops from distant provinces: he will hiss unto him, or them, the army, or the general, as a shepherd whistles to his dog to come. Instantly they will obey, marching speedily; no weariness shall retard, or difficulties stumble them: so eager would they be to hasten to the siege, that they would march day and night, and not even undress themselves, or loose their shoes, to lie down to sleep by the way; expressions denoting their indefatigable diligence. Their archers should be ready to shoot, their cavalry strong, their chariots of war swift, and come thundering along. Fierce as lions, their roar should intimidate; strong as lions, their defenceless prey would fall, and none be able to deliver the devoted people of Judaea from the ravening Roman soldiers. In that day of the siege of Jerusalem, they should roar with their shouts and battering engines, as the tempestuous sea; and the land of Judaea should be ravaged and sunk under its distress, as if the luminaries of heaven were extinguished, Matthew 24:29 their whole polity, civil and ecclesiastical, be utterly dissolved; and priests, princes, and people, sink in one promiscuous ruin. Note; (1.) When sinners reject the counsel of God against their own soul, they bring upon themselves swift destruction. (2.) God never wants instruments to execute his vengeance upon a guilty nation. (3.) When the Lord gives the word, the damnation of the wicked no longer slumbers. (4.) They who have fled from the light of truth to the darkness of sin, are justly consigned to the eternal darkness.