Woe to Those Who Call Evil Good
8 Woe to those who join house to house, who lay field to field, until there is no room, and you are made to dwell alone in the middle of the land! 9 In my ears, Yahweh of Armies says: “Surely many houses will be desolate, even great and beautiful, unoccupied. 10 For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield an ephah.” 11 Woe to those who rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink, who stay late into the night, until wine inflames them! 12 The harp, lyre, tambourine, and flute, with wine, are at their feasts; but they don’t respect the work of Yahweh, neither have they considered the operation of his hands. 13 Therefore my people go into captivity for lack of knowledge. Their honorable men are famished, and their multitudes are parched with thirst. 14 Therefore Sheol has enlarged its desire, and opened its mouth without measure; and their glory, their multitude, their pomp, and he who rejoices among them, descend into it. 15 So man is brought low, mankind is humbled, and the eyes of the arrogant ones are humbled; 16 but Yahweh of Armies is exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness. 17 Then the lambs will graze as in their pasture, and strangers will eat the ruins of the rich. 18 Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, and wickedness as with cart rope, 19 who say, “Let him make haste, let him hasten his work, that we may see it; let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come, that we may know it!” 20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! 22 Woe to those who are mighty to drink wine, and champions at mixing strong drink; 23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice for the innocent! 24 Therefore as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as the dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have rejected the law of Yahweh of Armies, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 25 Therefore Yahweh’s anger burns against his people, and he has stretched out his hand against them and has struck them. The mountains tremble, and their dead bodies are as refuse in the middle of the streets. For all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out. 26 He will lift up a banner to the nations from far away, and he will whistle for them from the end of the earth. Behold, they will come speedily and swiftly. 27 No one shall be weary nor stumble among them; no one shall slumber nor sleep, neither shall the belt of their waist be untied, nor the strap of their sandals be broken, 28 whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent. Their horses’ hoofs will be like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind. 29 Their roaring will be like a lioness. They will roar like young lions. Yes, they shall roar, and seize their prey and carry it off, and there will be no one to deliver. 30 They will roar against them in that day like the roaring of the sea. If one looks to the land, behold, darkness and distress. The light is darkened in its clouds.
Six woes on a prosperous society, and the fourth of them is about vocabulary.
Woe to those who join house to house, who lay field to field, until there is no room, and you are made to dwell alone in the middle of the land!
The first of six woes, and it describes the consolidation of property. In a land where every family held an inheritance that was not supposed to be permanently sold Leviticus 25:23, buying up the neighbors was not merely acquisitive; it dismantled the arrangement the country was built on. And the penalty is contained in the crime — a man who owns everything ends up living alone.
The sentence is agricultural: ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield an ephah Isaiah 5:10. A tenth of what was sown. The estates remain and stop producing.
Woe to those who rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink, who stay late into the night, until wine inflames them!
The second woe, and its charge is not the drinking but what the drinking crowds out: they don't respect the work of Yahweh, neither have they considered the operation of his hands Isaiah 5:12. The verb is the one from the first chapter — they do not consider. A full social calendar has filled the attention.
Therefore my people go into captivity for lack of knowledge. Their honorable men are famished, and their multitudes are parched with thirst.
Therefore Sheol has enlarged its desire, and opened its mouth without measure; and their glory, their multitude, their pomp, and he who rejoices among them, descend into it.
The grave is described as widening its throat to take a crowd, and what goes down is listed as the things they were proud of.
Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, and wickedness as with cart rope,
The third woe has a strange image: men harnessed to their own sin, dragging it behind them like a cart. And their taunt is quoted — let him make haste, let him hasten his work, that we may see it Isaiah 5:19 — which is the demand for a sign from people who have decided in advance that none is coming.
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
The fourth woe, and it is the most quoted line in the chapter. What is condemned is not doing wrong but renaming it — three pairs, each of which any child can tell apart, deliberately reversed. A society that has reached this point cannot be corrected by argument, because the words needed to conduct the argument have been reassigned.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes Isaiah 5:21, and woe to those who are mighty to drink wine... who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice for the innocent Isaiah 5:22–23. The last woe returns to the courts, and it links the drinking to the verdicts: the men described as champions at mixing drinks are the men selling acquittals.
Therefore Yahweh’s anger burns against his people, and he has stretched out his hand against them and has struck them. The mountains tremble, and their dead bodies are as refuse in the middle of the streets. For all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out.
The refrain that will recur four times in chapters nine and ten. It can be read two ways — a hand raised to strike again, or a hand held out still — and the book uses both.
settled What this mark means