Isaiah 5:12

And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe,.... Instruments of music; some struck with a bow or quill, or touched with the fingers; and others blown with the mouth: and wine are in their

And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands. And the harp - kinowr (H3658).

They give up themselves wholly to luxury, and that in a very unseasonable time, as it follows. But they regard not the work of the Lord; what God hath lately done, and is yet doing, and about to do among them; his grievous judgments, partly inflicted, and partly threatened, which required another course of life, even to give themselves to fasting, and prayer, and reformation, that so they might remove the incumbent, and prevent the approaching calamities.

Isaiah 5:12 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands.Ver. 12. And the harp and the viol.] To make themselves the more mad upon pleasure, they had their music of all sorts, that thereby they might banish all seriousness, and be lulled faster asleep in carnal security. Fescenninis cantibus omnia personabant, a practice still in use among drunkards, to drown the noise of their consciences; like as the old Italians, to drown the noise of the heavens when it thundered, were wont to ring their greatest bells, beat up their drums and tabors, &c; so Amos 6:4; Amos 6:6. Are in their feasts.] Or, Are their feasts or drinkings. But they regard not the work of the Lord.] That is, the first making, whether of themselves, to glorify God in some honest employment, and not to make drunkenness their occupation; or of other creatures, wherein they might find much of God, as Pliny did in the music of the gnat, and the curious paint of the butterfly; as Galen did in the double motion of the lungs, called systole and diastole; but especially as David did in the contemplation of the universe, and as Mr John Dod did in the flower he had in his hand at Holdenby, where, being invited by an honourable person to see that stately house, he answered, In this flower I can see more of God than in all the beautiful buildings in the world. See Psalms 111:2; Psalms 92:4; Psalms 37:4. Thus if these drunkards had done, they would not have so abused God’ s good creatures. But "whoredom and wine, and new wine had taken away their hearts." Neither regarded they anything but the sparkling of the wine in the cup, and the beauty of the strange woman, in the flagrancy of their beastly lust. Neither consider the operation of his hands.] The present disposing of his creatures, either by way of mercy or judgment. They pass by his providences unobserved, his late judgments upon the ten tribes, his heavy plagues hanging over their own heads, called his "work, and the counsel of the Holy One of Israel." Nihil omnino sapiunt nisi luxum suum, They mind nothing but their luxury and looseness. Saeculum est speculum reram invisibilium. - Trismeg.

(12) The harp, and the viol.—Here again the fashions of Judah followed those of Samaria, so closely indeed that Isaiah addresses the rulers of his own city as “the drunkards of Ephraim” (Isaiah 28:1; Amos 6:5). The list of instruments is fairly represented by the English words, but lute (or hand-harp), cymbal, timbrel (or tambourine), and flute would come somewhat closer to the Hebrew. They regard not the work of the Lord.—The life of luxury was then, as ever, one of practical atheism. Those who so lived did not see, never do see, any Divine plan or order in the world around them. They anticipated, in their swine-like greed, the baser types of the school of Epicurus.

12. Cf. Amos 6:5-6. And the harp … feasts] better, And guitar and harp, tambourine and flute, and wine constitute their banquet;—as if to drown the voice of conscience and destroy the sense of Jehovah’s presence and working in their midst. the work of the Lord … the operation of his hands] i.e. the crowning work of judgment which he is about to execute, and of which there were many ominous warnings for those who could discern the signs of the times: “opus aliquod illustre futurum … quod Deus hoc ipso tempore iam moliebatur” (Vitr.). Cf. Isaiah 5:19, ch. Isaiah 10:12, Isaiah 28:21; Psalms 28:5. A similar thought is expressed in Amos 6:6, where the luxurious nobles are charged with insensibility to the “ruin of Joseph.”

The prophet proceeds to state still further the extent of their crimes. This verse contains an account of their dissipated habits, and their consequent forgetfulness of God.

Second woe — on high-living and revelry, Isaiah 5:11-12.In the train of the luxury of the times, drunkenness follows.