And in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping. .. And behold joy and gladness
A call to repentance
I. THE CALL TO REPENTANCE (Isaiah 22:12).
1. The day here referred to was a season of abounding iniquity. A day of sore trouble (Isaiah 22:4-5).
II. THE RECEPTION IT MET WITH. (Isaiah 22:13). There is no room to suppose that they had given no attention to the message delivered by the prophet. It would rather appear that they had attended to it with accuracy, nay, studied its meaning on purpose to counteract it; for a contrast so minutely exact, a scheme of contradiction so completely adjusted, could hardly have been stumbled upon by mere accident. And indeed the latter part of the verse puts this beyond all doubt, “Let us eat and drink,” said they, “for tomorrow we shall die.” We are not to imagine that these words were spoken seriously, by one of those presumptuous and boasting rebels. The most daring amongst them must have been conscious that the aspect of the king of terrors, at their most sumptuous entertainments, would leave them no appetite either for flesh or wine. They meant it as a scoff, a witty saying, for turning rote ridicule the warning they had received, but which they did not believe. It is common enough to condemn the same faults in others which we easily forgive, nay, cherish in ourselves.
III. THE ALARMING DENUNCIATION OF WRATH against those perverse and obstinate transgressors (Isaiah 22:14).
IV. IMPROVEMENT. What concern have we in these things? (1 Corinthians 10:11). God is always the same. And therefore, in His past acts of government, as they are explained by His Word, we behold a plan of righteous administration, from whence we may learn, with some degree of certainty, what kind of treatment, in similar circumstances, we ourselves have reason to expect. (H. Blair, D. D.)
God’s call to repentance
The awful state of Jerusalem forces this truth upon our minds--that no privileges, civil or religious, can give immunity to a depraved and guilty people, from the threatened judgments of an angry God. In how many instances do the circumstances and the conduct of the ancient Jews strikingly resemble ours!
I. THE DUTY TO WHICH GOD CALLS US. We are called to “weeping and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth”--these expressions being indicative of the ancient” forms of mourning.” We are called by our calamities to it; we are called by our God.
II. THE CONDUCT WHICH IS DISPLAYED. “And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”--a sensualist notion, which may be taken here either as the language of despair--“Since we must die tomorrow, let us eat and drink today; or, in the way of sneering--They say we shall die; let us eat and drink then, and enjoy as much as we can of the good things of this life.”
III. THE THREATENING WHICH IS DENOUNCED (Isaiah 22:14). God’s threatenings are not idle declamations. (G. B. Macdonald.)
Judah’s great folly
They were entering on the terrible issues of the struggle with Assyria with as light a heart as the Parisians did on the Franco-German war. They were spending, as it were, the night before the battle in the revelry of drunken mirth, as the Saxons spent the night before the battle of Hastings. (E. H. Plumptre, D. D.)