Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
Ver. 5. Awake, ye drunkards] Ye ale stakes, and suckers (Heb. Shiccorim), that pour in heady and intoxicating drinks, such as soon lay you to sleep, and (besides) take away your heart, Hosea 4:11, rob you of yourselves, and lay a beast in your room. Portentosum sane potionis genus, saith Pliny concerning ale, that excessively drunk maketh men mere sleepy than dormice: besides that worse sleep of carnal security, Eph 5:14 Romans 13:11. These, therefore, are here called upon to be sober and watch, see 1 Thessalonians 5:6 1 Peter 5:8 1Pe 4:7 yea, to weep and howl, to turn their laughter into mourning, and their joy into heaviness. And why? For their sin they should have done (as that drunkard in the ecclesiastical history, that, touched with a sense of his sin, wept himself blind), but here they are sarcastically called upon to weep for their great loss, as they esteem it.
Because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth] As many things occur between the chin and the chalice, the cup and the lip: you made account to have mouthed it, to have swilled your souls, as they say, and to have swallowed it down your wide gullets, Vinum merum nondum dilutum. But behold, it happens somewhat otherwise; the caterpillar hath been before you, and left you nothing better than Adam's ale to tipple. This as cold comfort to the drunkard, whose word is that of the vine in Jotham's parable, Non possum relinquere vinum meum, I am not able to leave my wine. Take away my liquor, you take away my life. Austin brings him in saying, Malle se vitam quam vinum eripi, He would rather lose his life than his wine. And Ambrose tells of one Theotimus, that being told by his physicians, that much quaffing would make him blind, Vale lumen amicum, said he, Farewell, sweet eyes; if ye will not bear wine, ye are no eyes for me. This drunkard would rather lose his sight than his sin; his soul than his lust. Such kind of persons are like the panther, which is said to love the dung of man so much, as if it be hanged on high from it, it will skip and leap up, and never leave till it have burst itself in pieces to get it; and this is the way they take that creature. God will take these natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, 2 Peter 2:14, after another manner. He will not only cut them short enough here, but turn a cup of fire and brimstone down their throats, Psalms 11:6, which will be worse to them than that ladleful of boiling lead poured down the throat of a drunken Turk, by the command of a bashaw.