Isaiah 5:18-30
The passions of people and the aims which they pursue vary according to their social status or temperament. Some make it their business to add field to field, house to house (without being able to live in more than one at a time – v. 8). Woe to them, for those things of the earth they will have to leave on the earth . . . in order to appear before God empty-handed. Others seek their satisfaction in worldly entertainment and the deceptive excitement of alcohol vv.11, 12, 22). Woe to them when they wake up, too late, to eternal realities. Comrades in debauchery, these people glory in sin and openly provoke the LORD (vv. 18, 19); their hardened consciences have lost all sensitivity to good and evil (v. 20), and they find delight in their own wisdom (v. 21; in contrast to Proverbs 3:7). All men are included, from the wretched drunkard to the most eminent thinker, in a common hopeless search for happiness (Ecclesiastes 8:13). But the word of God and the end of the thoughts and desires of mankind, whether they be lofty or base, is – woe, woe, woe!
We shall see in the next chapters how God uses a nation (Assyria) as a rod to punish His people.