Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.
Ver. 9. Stay yourselves, and wonder.] Sistite gradum, stand still, and stand amazed at this people's stupendous stupidity and desperate security. Piscator rendereth the text thus: Cunctantur, itaque admiramini; deliciantur, itaque vociferamini. They delay (to return), therefore wonder ye at it; they sport at it, but cry ye out, as lamenting their folly. Ezekiel 9:4 , where the original is very elegant Some translate the words thus: Obstupefacite vos ipsi, et sitis stupidi, et excaecate vos ipsi et sitis caeci, stupify yourselves and be stupid; blind yourselves and be blind; do so, I say, for you will do so undoubtedly. And here begin their spiritual miseries. See Isaiah 29:1; Isaiah 6:9,10 .
They are drunk, but not with wine.] But yet with that which is much worse, viz., with a spirit of stupidity; Isa 29:10 they are not only drunk with a dry drunkenness, but deadly sick of a lethargy, being dulled in their understandings, lulled asleep in their sinful practices, ready to fly in the face of one that shall offer to awake them. Other drunkenness a man may sleep out, sleep himself sober, as Noah did; not so here, as Nazianzen a well observeth upon this text.
a Homil. de plaga grandinis.