Matthew Henry on Isaiah 24:1-12
It is a very dark and melancholy scene that this prophecy presents to our view; turn our eyes which way we will, every thing looks dismal. The threatened desolations are here described in a great variety of expressions to the same purport, and all aggravating.
I. The earth is stripped of all its ornaments and looks as if it were taken off its basis; it is made empty and waste (Isa 24:1), as if it were reduced to its first chaos, Tohu and Bohu, nothing but confusion and emptiness again (Gen 1:2), without form and void. It is true earth sometimes signifies the land, and so the same word eretz is here translated (Isa 24:3): The land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled; but I see not wh…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Isaiah 24:11
crying for wine--to drown their sorrows in drink (Isa 16:9); Joe 1:5, written about the same time, resembles this.
John Gill on Isaiah 24:11
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 kin…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Calvin on Isaiah 24:11
There is a cry about wine. He means, that there will be a scarcity of wine; for where want or hunger is found, it is accompanied by unceasing complaints, not only in private, but "in the streets" and public places. He therefore points out those doleful sounds and complaints, but, at the same time, reproves their luxury and intemperance, because they were not satisfied with what was necessary, but greedily swallowed wine, and abandoned themselves to every kind of enjoyment. We must supply the contrast. "Hitherto you have had abundance of wine and of food, and you have taken occasion from it to grow insolent against God; and therefore you will justly be deprived of them, and, instead of your w…
