67–Reasons God Punishes

The prophet addresses the people of Judah. He exhorts them to reflect on their deeds and to wonder why they forsook the words of the living God, transmitted to them through His prophets. Instead they to listened to the false prophets, who enticed them to do evil. The people had rejected the teaching of Isaiah with mockery. Even when they did not have strong drink, they were intoxicated with the lies of the false prophets. They did not understand truth any more than the drunkard who had become stupefied, blind, and drunken to the truth as well as reality. Isaiah then tells them to act as he knows that they will act. They will simply "stare with astonishment" at a prophecy which will seem to them outside of what they had accepted from the false prophets. They will not yield to the truth even with the slightest belief.

This stubbornness eventually resulted in God's punishment when God visited them. "Jehovah is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty" (Nahum 1:3). This prophecy now gives an answer to the secret of Israel's stubbornness and punishment. It also shows how great is the LORD'S mercy and grace towards his people.

The most glaring example of this blindness is with the Jewish leaders at the time of Christ and his apostles. They chose darkness rather than the light of the Gospel, which was all surrounding them. They were so self-righteous that they had been given up by God to a reprobate mind. Their obstinate rejection of the Messiah, is the obvious evidence. This results in God's wrath.