Isaiah 28

Isaiah warns the proud, drunken leaders of Ephraim (the northern kingdom) and then the scoffing rulers of Jerusalem. They trust in lies and political deals rather than God. God promises a sure cornerstone for those who believe, and shows through a farmer’s patient work that His discipline is wise and has a purpose.

Isaiah 28:1

Isaiah opens with a lament over Samaria, capital of Ephraim, proudly perched on a hill above rich farmland. Its leaders are drunk with wine and with their own pride. Their splendor is like a flower already wilting. What looks glorious is about to fade.

BSA: fading (“withering, losing strength”): The city’s beauty is already dying, though its leaders do not see it. pride (“arrogance, self-importance”): Their drunkenness is joined to a deeper sickness of self-importance.

See also: Isaiah 40:7-8.

Isaiah 28:2

God has an instrument of judgment ready, here pictured as violent weather: hail, tempest, and flooding rain. Most readers see in this the Assyrian army. It will throw down Ephraim’s proud crown as a storm flattens a garland. Nothing human can stand against what the Lord sends.

BSA: smash (“the pride of the nation”): What is struck down is the nation’s pride itself.

Isaiah 28:3-4

The proud crown will be trampled underfoot. The beautiful city will be like an early ripe fig, picked and swallowed at once by the first person who sees it. Samaria will be taken quickly and easily. What seemed secure on its hill will be gone in a moment.

BSA: trampled (“tread on, crushed”): The glory of the drunkards ends in humiliation, under the feet of others.

Isaiah 28:5-6

The tone turns to hope. When the proud crown falls, the LORD Himself becomes the true crown for His faithful remnant. He gives judges a spirit of justice and gives defenders at the city gate the strength to hold. What people try to find in themselves, God supplies.

BSA: remnant (“surviving ones, those left behind”): God keeps a faithful few through judgment, and He is their glory.

See also: Isaiah 10:20-22.

Isaiah 28:7-8

Judah’s leaders are no better. Priests and prophets, who should give clear guidance from God, are too drunk to see rightly or judge fairly. Their feasting tables are filthy with vomit. Leaders who cannot think clearly cannot lead others to God.

BSA: stumbling (“failing to decide rightly, lacking discernment”): Their drunkenness ruins the very judgments people depend on them to make.

See also: Proverbs 31:4-5.

Isaiah 28:9-10

The drunken leaders sneer at Isaiah. They ask who he thinks he is teaching, babies just weaned? They mock his message as baby talk. The Hebrew sounds like a nursery chant, rule after rule, a little here and a little there. They find his simple, repeated teaching beneath them.

Hebrew: צַו לָצָו קַו לָקָו (tsav latsav, qav laqav, H6673) — “order on order, line on line.” The short, sing-song syllables sound like a child’s drill. This is how the scoffers imitated Isaiah’s teaching, mocking it as childish.

Isaiah 28:11-13

God answers the mockery. They scorned plain speech, so He will speak through foreign tongues, the language of invading Assyrians. God had offered them rest, but they refused to listen. Now the same simple words will become a stumbling block, and they will fall, be snared, and be captured.

BSA: rest (“the promised haven”): God offered real refuge to the weary, and they turned it down.

See also: Matthew 11:28; 1 Corinthians 14:21.

Isaiah 28:14-15

Isaiah now addresses the scoffing rulers in Jerusalem. They boast of a pact with death and Sheol, meaning they believe they are safe from the coming disaster. Probably they trusted political alliances and deceit. They have made lies their shelter, and a shelter made of lies cannot protect anyone.

BSA: covenant (“formal, binding”): They treat their escape plan as a legal treaty, as though death could be bound by their agreement. lies (“falsehoods, deceptions”): Their whole security rests on deception, including self-deception.

Isaiah 28:16

Against their false refuge, God lays a true one: a tested, precious cornerstone in Zion. Whoever trusts in it will not be shaken. The New Testament sees this stone fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Faith is not a deal made with God on our terms, but resting on what He has laid.

BSA: cornerstone (“a chief foundation stone”): The whole building is set and measured by this one stone. believes (“has faith, trusts”): Safety lies in trusting what God has provided, not in schemes of our own.

See also: 1 Peter 2:6; Romans 9:33; Ephesians 2:20.

Isaiah 28:17-19

God will build with justice as the measuring line and righteousness as the plumb line, and the crooked lie-built shelter will fail the test. Hail and flood will sweep it away. Their pact with death will be cancelled. Every pass of the scourge will carry them off, and merely hearing of it brings terror.

BSA: measuring line (“a cord or line for measuring”): God holds every life up against a straight standard, as a builder checks a wall. dissolved (“annulled, cancelled”): God declares their deal with death void.

Isaiah 28:20

This proverb-like picture says that the false security the rulers made is hopelessly inadequate. A bed too short and a blanket too narrow give no rest and no warmth. Trusting anything but God leaves us uncomfortable and uncovered, however carefully we have arranged it.

BSA: short (“insufficient, lacking”): Human schemes are simply not big enough to cover our real need.

Isaiah 28:21

God will rise up in battle, as He once did for David at Mount Perazim and in the Valley of Gibeon. This time He fights against His own people. Judgment is His strange work, strange because He takes no delight in it. It is not what He prefers to do.

BSA: strange work (“an unusual and surprising act”): Fighting against His own people is foreign to God’s heart, yet His holiness demands it.

See also: 2 Samuel 5:20-25; Ezekiel 33:11.

Isaiah 28:22

Isaiah gives a final warning: stop mocking, or the chains will tighten. The decree of destruction comes from the Lord GOD of Hosts and covers the whole land. Scorn does not slow God’s word down. Humbling ourselves in time is the only wise reply.

BSA: shackles (“bonds, restraints, or chains”): Continued scorn makes the bondage of judgment heavier.

Isaiah 28:23-26

Isaiah now teaches by a parable from farming. A farmer does not plow all day every day. He plows, then levels, then sows each crop in its own way and place. His skill is a gift, for God instructs him. God likewise has a time and purpose for each stage of His dealings.

BSA: instructs (“teaches, guides”): Even ordinary farm wisdom is a gift from God. properly (“in right judgment, aright”): The farmer works with good sense, matching method to need.

Isaiah 28:27-28

Different crops need different handling. Delicate seeds like caraway and cumin are beaten lightly with a stick, while grain for bread is threshed more heavily, but never ground endlessly. The farmer stops when the work is done. So God’s discipline is measured to what each person needs, and it never goes past what is wise.

BSA: endlessly (“for perpetuity, forever”): God’s threshing has an end. It aims to produce something useful, not to destroy forever.

See also: Lamentations 3:31-33.

Isaiah 28:29

The lesson of the farm comes from the LORD of Hosts Himself. He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom. His judgments are neither careless nor cruel. Even when we cannot see the reason, we can trust that He knows exactly what He is doing.

BSA: counsel (“advice, plan, purpose”): God works from a settled plan, not from impulse.

See also: Romans 11:33.