Isaiah 5:11-14

Woe unto them that rise up, &c.— Another vice which the prophet reproves in these verses, is luxury or intemperance; whose companion and daughter is Inconsideration of the works of God, whose child also is Ignorance. See the beginning of the 13th verse. The work of the Lord, and the operation of his hands, may signify, in their greatest extent, all that God has done, as well in the creation of the world as in the establishment and rule of his church from the beginning of time; but more particularly it may here refer to the study of the divine law, and God's peculiar dispensations toward the Jewish people. Isaiah 5:13. We have in these verses the punishment of the preceding crime, and Isaiah 5:17 the consequences of that punishment. To luxury, abundance, revelling, intemperance in the use of earthly, goods, are opposed poverty, famine, thirst, a want of necessaries, a total abolition of all glory, magnificence, and pomp; and the like. The allusion in the beginning of the 14th verse is, according to Bishop Lowth, to the form of the ancient sepulchres, which were subterraneous caverns hollowed out of a rock; the mouth of which was generally closed by a great stone. The Hebrew, נפשׁה שׁאול הרחיבה לכן laken hirchiibah sheol napshah, might be tendered literally, Wherefore the grave hath enlarged her soul. The prosopopoeia is extremely fine and expressive, and the image is fraught with the most tremendous horror. Vitringa supposes that, according to the letter, some powerful prince, the terrible messenger of death and hell, is here described; who, armed by the divine judgment, spreads death and devastation around him. Nebuchadnezzar and the Roman princes are thus well characterized.