Isaiah 24:11

24:1-12 All whose treasures and happiness are laid up on earth, will soon be brought to want and misery. It is good to apply to ourselves what the Scripture says of the vanity and vexation of spirit which attend all things here below. Sin has turned the earth upside down; the earth is become quite different to man, from what it was when God first made it to be his habitation. It is, at the best, like a flower, which withers in the hands of those that please themselves with it, and lay it in their bosoms. The world we live in is a world of disappointment, a vale of tears; the children of men in it are but of few days, and full of trouble, See the power of God's curse, how it makes all empty, and lays waste all ranks and conditions. Sin brings these calamities upon the earth; it is polluted by the sins of men, therefore it is made desolate by God's judgments. Carnal joy will soon be at end, and the end of it is heaviness. God has many ways to imbitter wine and strong drink to those who love them; distemper of body, anguish of mind, and the ruin of the estate, will make strong drink bitter, and the delights of sense tasteless. Let men learn to mourn for sin, and rejoice in God; then no man, no event, can take their joy from them.

There is a crying for wine in the streets,.... Not to them that have it, to come and sell it, as Kimchi; but for want of it: there shall be a howling and lamentation in the streets of Rome, during the siege of it, when there will be a famine of bread and of wine, as in Revelation 18:8 by those who used to drink wine, and make glad their hearts; but now shall be without it. This is put for all desirable things, which their souls lusted after; but now will be departed from them, Revelation 18:14 , all joy is darkened: or come to an eventide; the light of joy is turned into the darkness of misery and distress; this will be, when the fifth vial is poured out on the seat of the beast, and his kingdom will be full of darkness; and men will gnaw their tongues for pain, and yet not repent of their sins, but blaspheme the God of heaven, Revelation 16:10, the mirth of the land is gone; not Jerusalem, the joy of the whole earth, as Jarchi; but the mirth and joy of the city of Rome; See Gill on Isaiah 24:8.

There is a crying for wine; for the want or loss of their wine, and spoil of their vines, whereby they were deprived of the means both of their delight and profit; whereby he intimates their gross sensuality and sottishhess, that instead of crying for their sins, and humbling themselves under God’s judgments, did only howl for their corn, and wine, and oil , as they did, Hosea 7:14 .

Verse 11. - There is a crying for wine in the streets . Wine, though still manufactured (see vers. 7, 9) is scarce, but is much sought after. Men clamor for it at the doors of the wine-shops, but are unable to obtain it. They crave for its exhilarating effects, or perhaps for the oblivion which it brings when drunk to excess. If they could obtain it, they would act as the Jews in the siege of Jerusalem ( Isaiah 22:13 ). But they cannot. Hence even the factitious merriment, which wine is capable of producing, is denied now to the inhabitants of the earth, with whom all joy is darkened , from whom all mirth is gone . Isaiah 24:11

(11) There is a crying for wine in the streets. —Literally, because of wine in the fields. The Hebrew noun for the latter word hovers between the meaning of an open place within and one without a city. The context seems in favour of the latter sense. Men weep in the fields because there is no vintage. All joy is darkened.—The English verb exactly expresses the force of the Hebrew, which is used, as in Judges 19:9, of the gloom of sunset. (Comp. Micah 3:6.) The light of joy had passed into the blackness of darkness.

There is a crying for wine in the streets - The inhabitants of the city, turned from their dwellings, would cry for wine to alleviate their distress, and to sustain them in their calamity (compare Isaiah 16:8-10 ). All joy is darkened - Is gone, or has departed, like the joyful light at the setting of the sun.

The world with its pleasure is judged; the world's city is also judged, in which both the world's power and the world's pleasure were concentrated. "The city of tohu is broken to pieces; every house is shut up, so that no man can come in. There is lamentation for wine in the fields; all rejoicing has set; the delight of the earth is banished. What is left of the city is wilderness, and the gate was shattered to ruins. For so will it be within the earth, in the midst of the nations; as at the olive-beating, as at the gleaning, when the vintage is over." The city of tohu (kiryath tōhu): this cannot be taken collectively, as Rosenmller, Arndt, and Drechsler suppose, on account of the annexation of kiryath to tohu, which is turned into a kind of proper name; for can we understand it as referring to Jerusalem, as the majority of commentators have done, including even Schegg and Stier (according to Isaiah 32:13-14 ), after we have taken "the earth" (hâ'âretz) in the sense of kosmos (the world). It is rather the central city of the world as estranged from God; and it is here designated according to its end, which end will be tohu, as its nature was tohu. Its true nature was the breaking up of the harmony of all divine order; and so its end will be the breaking up of its own standing, and a hurling back, as it were, into the chaos of its primeval beginning. With a very similar significance Rome is called turbida Roma in Persius (i. 5).

The whole is thoroughly Isaiah's, even to the finest points: tohu is the same as in Isaiah 29:21 ; and for the expression מבּוא (so that you cannot enter; namely, on account of the ruins which block up the doorway) compare Isaiah 23:1 ; Isaiah 7:8 ; Isaiah 17:1 , also Isaiah 5:9 ; Isaiah 6:11 ; Isaiah 32:13 . The cry or lamentation for the wine out in the fields ( Isaiah 24:11 ; cf., Job 5:10 ) is the mourning on account of the destruction of the vineyards; the vine, which is one of Isaiah's most favourite symbols, represents in this instance also all the natural sources of joy. In the term ‛ârbâh (rejoicing) the relation between joy and light is presupposed; the sun of joy is set (compare Micah 3:6 ). What remains of the city בּעיר is partitive, just as בּו in Isaiah 10:22 ) is shammâh (desolation), to which the whole city has been brought (compare Isaiah 5:9 ; Isaiah 32:14 ). The strong gates, which once swarmed with men, are shattered to ruins (yuccath, like Micah 1:7 , for yūcath, Ges. 67, Anm. 8; שׁאיּה, ἁπ λεγ, a predicating noun of sequence, as in Isaiah 37:26 , "into desolated heaps;" compare Isaiah 6:11 , etc., and other passages). In the whole circuit of the earth ( Isaiah 6:12 ; Isaiah 7:22 ; hâ'âretz is "the earth" here as in Isaiah 10:23 ; Isaiah 19:24 ), and in the midst of what was once a crowd of nations (compare Micah 5:6-7 ), there is only a small remnant of men left.