The calamities of spiritual ignorance.
The miseries which are unfolded in this passage are ascribed, in the thirteenth verse, to ignorance. "My people are gone, ere because they have no knowledge." But it is necessary to distinguish here. We must consider—
I. THE IGNORANCE WHICH IS SPIRITUAL AND THEREFORE GUILTY. There is ignorance which is entirely mental and which is wholly guiltless; e.g. that of the little child who cannot understand some of the obligations into which we grow, or that of the heathen who cannot possibly acquire a knowledge of Christ and his salvation. There is a mental ignorance which is not guiltless, but culpable; viz. that of the man who has not acquired the information he had the opportunity of gaining in earlier days, and that of the man who goes down through iniquity and immorality into intellectual feebleness and impotence. But the ignorance of which our text treats (Isaiah 5:13) is not mental, but spiritual; it is that of the whole spiritual nature rather than of the understanding; it is that of men who had a formal knowledge of God and duty, but who did not lay it to heart and did not act upon it. It is the ignorance of the nation, which might, if it would, understand what the will of God is in the matter of Divine worship, or in regard to its poor and uninstructed members, or to its uncivilized and helpless neighbors; but which will not take the trouble to ascertain it, or even blinds its eyes so that it shall not see it. It is the ignorance of the individual man, who has indeed an undefined knowledge of his obligations to his Father and his Savior, but who studiously keeps it out of view; who will not present it to the eyes of his soul, lest he should be constrained to reproach himself and to change his course. These are they who "have no knowledge," in the sense of the prophet.
II. THE CALAMITIES WHICH IT ENTAILS. These are manifold, as the passage intimates. They include:
1. Exile—"going into captivity" (Isaiah 5:13); dwelling in a "far country;" being, spiritually, where all is strange and alien and hostile, a long way from God and from the privileges of his house and the enjoyment of his service.
2. A void and aching heart. "The honorable men are famished, and the multitude dried up with thirst" (Isaiah 5:13). Not knowing God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, depriving themselves of the deep and lasting satisfactions of his favor and friendship, men find all material sources of joy utterly unsatisfying; they eat, and hunger still; they drink, but" thirst again."
3. Impoverishment. (Isaiah 5:4.) The nation that does not act up to the height of its knowledge and its opportunity, that is not governed by its sense of right and duty, but by its inclination to pride and pleasure, is a nation that will decline; it will soon be stripped of its power. "Hades will open its mouth without measure," and "swallow up" its glory, its eminence, its joy; it will be bereft of all of which it boasts, for the hand of the Lord will be against it, and his righteous judgments will overtake it (Isaiah 5:16).
4. Humiliation. (Isaiah 5:15.)
5. Mortification. How unspeakably mortified would those Jewish captives be to find themselves pining in a foreign land when their own fields at home were unoccupied, the spoil of the roving flock, the prey of the marauding stranger! (Isaiah 5:17) And how bitter must be the mortification and self-reproach which they must feel who have to realize the results of their guilty spiritual ignorance; who have to see that, afar off and beyond their reach, are joys which they might have shared, honors which they might have won, spheres which they might have filled, a large heritage which was their own but which will never be theirs again!—C.
Sin in its strength.
We have here some thoughts about sin.
I. ITS EVIL GROWTH. Whatever the precise thought of the prophet, his words (Isaiah 5:18) are strongly suggestive of the fact that sin gradually attains a terrible power. Its "pull" may at first be that of a silken thread; presently it becomes that of a strong string; then it is found to be that of a hard wire; finally it reaches that of a "cart-rope." And this, whether we regard the sinner as
In the one case he is moved only with great difficulty, and often the bond which is thrown about him snaps in twain; but, in time, sin gains strength, and it pulls him as with a rope that cannot be broken. In the other case—probably the one here intended—he himself hardly succeeds, sometimes fails, in leading men astray; but in course of time he draws his neighbors along the road of wrong-doing with ease; the tie by which he holds and by which he constrains them is stout and strong. He draws sin "as it were with a cart-rope."
1. Shun the first overtures of the ungodly; have nothing to do, in the way of friendship, with the enemies of truth and righteousness.
2. If men have acquired a fascinating power over you, there is no deliverance from their evil grasp save by genuine penitence and an earnest appeal to the Almighty Friend; his hand can cut the strongest cords of sin.
II. ITS FEARFUL CULMINATION. Sin reaches its summit when it stands on the height of impious defiance of the living God (Isaiah 5:19). Reverence shrinks with a holy reluctance from taking such words into its lips, even when it simply quotes the utterance of impiety. Yet men are found in the path of sin who will employ such language without remorse! In the earlier stages of ungodliness men would be shocked at the idea of doing and being that to which a continuance in irreligion naturally leads up. That puny man should positively defy his Maker seems antecedently unlikely, if not impossible. Yet glaring facts too plainly prove that an evil course does not stop short of even this extreme. What awful possibilities of evil reside within a human soul! How unmeasurably wise it is to place ourselves under the guidance of the great Teacher, to have our hearts the residence of the Holy Spirit! Then, but only then, are we safe from moral enormities which are a thousand times more to be dreaded than the extinction of our being.
III. ITS RIGHTEOUS DOOM. "Woe unto them!" And they shall have woe! They may say in their shameless arrogance, "Let us break their bands asunder," etc.; but "the Lord shall have them in derision … he shall vex them in his sore displeasure" (Psalms 2:3-5). They may "set their mouth against the heavens," and may say, "How doth God know?" but "how are they brought into desolation, as in a moment they are utterly consumed with terrors" (Psalms 73:9, Psalms 73:11, Psalms 73:19). God will overturn their purposes; he will scatter their friendships and leave them in helpless loneliness; he will bring them into an intolerable humiliation; he will condemn them at his judgment bar; he will sentence them to eternal exile.—C.