properly · verb, hithpael imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
wonder
וּתְמָ֔הוּu.te.Ma.hu
H8539
to be in consternation · conjunction + verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
out
הִשְׁתַּֽעַשְׁע֖וּhish.ta.'ash.'U
H8173
(in a good acceptation) to look upon (with complacency) · verb, hithpael imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
cry
וָשֹׁ֑עוּva.Sho.'u
H8173
(in a good acceptation) to look upon (with complacency) · conjunction + verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
drunken
שָֽׁכְר֣וּsha.khe.Ru
H7937
to become tipsy · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
wine
יַ֔יִןYa.yin
H3196
wine (as fermented) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
stagger
נָע֖וּna.'U
H5128
to waver · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
drink
שֵׁכָֽרshe.Khar
H7941
an intoxicant · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 51:21-22 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:
Isaiah 19:14 The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man stag…
Isaiah 33:13-14 Hear, ye that are far off, what I have done; and, ye that are near, acknowledge my might.
Isaiah 49:26 And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all fle…
Revelation 17:6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with gr…
Isaiah 28:7-8 But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong dri…
Isaiah 1:2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against m…
Isaiah 22:12-13 And in that day did the Lord GOD of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth:
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 29:9-16
Here, I. The prophet stands amazed at the stupidity of the greatest part of the Jewish nation. They had Levites, who taught the good knowledge of the Lord and had encouragement from Hezekiah in doing so, Ch2 30:22. They had prophets, who brought them messages immediately from God, and signified to them what were the causes and what would be the effects of God's displeasure against them. Now, one would think, surely this great nation, that has all the advantages of divine revelation, is a wise and understanding people, Deu 4:6. But, alas! it was quite otherwise, Isa 29:9. The prophet addresses himself to the sober thinking part of them, calling upon them to be affected with the general carele…
Stay--rather, "Be astounded"; expressing the stupid and amazed incredulity with which the Jews received Isaiah's announcement.
wonder--The second imperative, as often (Isa 8:9), is a threat; the first is a simple declaration of a fact, "Be astounded, since you choose to be so, at the prophecy, soon you will be amazed at the sight of the actual event" [MAURER].
cry . . . out . . . cry--rather, "Be ye blinded (since you choose to be so, though the light shines all round you), and soon ye shall be blinded" in good earnest to your sorrow [MAURER], (Isa 6:9-10).
not with wine--but with spiritual paralysis (Isa 51:17, Isa 51:21).
ye . . . they--The change from speaking to, to speaking of t…
Stay yourselves, and wonder,.... Stop a while, pause a little, consider within yourselves the case and circumstances of these people, and wonder at their stupidity. Kimchi thinks these words were spoken in the times of Ahaz, with respect to the men of Judah; and so Aben Ezra says, they are directed to the men of Zion; and it is generally thought that they are spoken to the more religious and sober part of them; though, by the following verse Isaiah 29:10, it appears that the case was general, and that the people to whom this address is made were as stupid as others:
cry ye out, and cry; or, "delight yourselves" (s), as in the margin; take your pleasure, indulge yourselves in carnal mirth, g…
The Church Fathers
What are we to do now, my brothers, when crushed, cast down and drunk but not with strong drink or with wine, which excites and obfuscates but for a while, but with the blow which the Lord has inflicted upon us? He says, "And you, O heart, be stirred and shaken, and gives to the despisers the spirit of sorrow and deep sleep to drink." To [them] he also says, "See, you despisers, behold, and wonder and perish." How shall we bear his convictions; or what reply shall we make, when he reproaches us not only with the multitude of the benefits for which we have continued ungrateful, but also with his chastisements, and reckons up the remedies with which we have refused to be healed?
Yes, it is possible to be drunk without wine; it is possible for a sober person to act as if he is drunk and to revel like a prodigal. If one could not get drunk without wine, the prophet would never have said, "Woe to those who are drunk not from wine"; if one could not get drunk without wine, Paul would never have said, "Do not be drunk with wine." For he said this as if there were a possibility of getting drunk some other way. And it is possible. A person can be drunk with anger, with unseemly desire, with greed, with vainglory, with ten thousand other passions. For drunkenness is nothing other than a loss of right reason, a derangement and depriving the soul of its health.
(Verse 9) Be astonished and amazed: fluctuate and waver, become drunk, not with wine, be moved, not with intoxication. But all prophecy after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, that is, Ariel, is against the scribes and Pharisees, who, possessing the key of knowledge, do not enter themselves, nor do they allow others to enter. And it is commanded to them, that they should be amazed and astonished, rather according to the septuagint dissolution of the whole body and the excess of the mind, and that they should be moved and fluctuate: staggering not from wine or from strong drink, but from the spirit of sleep or of the Lord's compunction, so that understanding their evil, they may at some point repent, and say with the prophet: I am troubled in my weakness, while the thorn is being fastened to me (Ps. XXXI, 4).
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Sennacherib — Sin (the god) sends many brothers, son of Sargon, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria (B.C. 705), in the 23rd year of Hezekiah. “Like the Persian Xerxes, he was weak and vainglorious, cowardly…
Wine — The common Hebrew word for wine is yayin, from a root meaning “to boil up,” “to be in a ferment.” Others derive it from a root meaning “to tread out,” and hence the juice of the grape trodden out.…
Reprobacy · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Tarry and wonder. Isaiah follows out the same subject, and attacks more keenly the gross stupidity of the people. Instead of "tarry," some render the term, "Be amazed;" but the view which I prefer may be thus expressed: "Though they dwell much and long on this thought, yet it will end in nothing else than that, by long continued thought, their minds shall be amazed." In short, he means that the judgment of God will so completely overwhelm their minds, that though they torture themselves by thinking and reflecting, still they will be unable to find any outlet or conclusion.
They are drunken, and not with wine. He now assigns the reason why fixed thought does not aid them in conquering their…
This enigma of the future the prophet holds out before the eyes of his contemporaries. The prophet received it by revelation of Jehovah; and without the illumination of Jehovah it could not possibly be understood. The deep degradation of Ariel, the wonderful deliverance, the sudden elevation from the abyss to this lofty height - all this was a matter of faith. But this faith was just what the nation wanted, and therefore the understanding depending upon it was wanting also. The shemu‛âh was there, but the bı̄nâh was absent; and all שׁמועה הבין was wrecked on the obtuseness of the mass. The prophet, therefore, who had received the unhappy calling to harden his people, could not help exclaim…
Jerusalem’s blindness kept its people from understanding God’s plan.
29:8 Like a hungry or thirsty person, the Assyrians could taste the victory over Jerusalem. Yet they never became victorious.
Rashi on Isaiah 29:9
stop Be patient to reflect [to think] about your deeds.
and wonder And wonder about your corruption.
they became blind (הִשְׁתַּעַשְׁעוּ) an expression related to (supra 6:10) “And his eyes are becoming sealed (הָשַׁע),” they were blind, not being able to see [lit., from seeing].
They were intoxicated yourselves (sic) but not from wine. Why? ([Parshandatha claims that this reading is erroneous. The correct reading, according to all manuscripts is:] their wise men, but not from wine.)
