Isaiah 5:21-24 - Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes

5:21-23

The general indictment of the state of the nation continues. “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes”. The people who promote the current nonsense are very proud of themselves, they think that they are clever, and that those who stick to God’s ways are stupid. This pride of man affects all areas. Many boast about how much they can drink. It even affects the courts. One might expect, indeed one should be able to expect, the judges to administer justice, that is there job after all. Instead they acquit the guilty. And in our society faith in the court system is declining, money seems to be more important than justice. Yet note that before all these descriptions of the sad state of the nation is the word “woe”. Evil in its various forms may seem to be triumphing, but its apparent victory will not last forever, a judgement from God will come.

5:24

Isaiah now describes the outworking of the judgement in graphic terms. It is worth remembering why the prophets often use such graphic, even lurid, language to describe God’s judgement. Why not just say “God will judge?” It is because communication is not just communicating the fact, they also need to feel the fact. God is communicating with our minds and our emotions. The judgement will be real. There are debates about hell, about whether there is eternal conscious torment or annihilation, or conditional immortality.  These debates really annoy me, for they completely miss the point. Jesus used graphic language to describe hell, actually to describe God’s judgement. We should do nothing to soften these descriptions. We are meant to appreciate that hell is hell, hell is horrible, more terrible than anything we can ever imagine. And saying “hell, not as bad as you think it is”, which seems to be what some people are in effect saying, is utterly misleading.

Then look at why the things described in the first part of the verse happen, “they have rejected the Law of the Lord of hosts, they have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (ESV). We do not appreciate the seriousness, the evil, of rejecting God’s law and despising His words. We would do far better to dwell on what an abomination it is to despise God’s word, that pointless debates about the nature of hell.