Isaiah 56

Wesley: a prediction of Israel’s destruction by cruel enemies. Having encouraged the Gentiles with gracious promises, the prophet now terrifies unbelieving Jews: as the Gentiles would believe and be saved, so they would reject their Messiah and be destroyed.

Arminian interpreters keep this historic: beasts are invading powers. The fork is faith or refusal. The very Lord who opened the house of prayer (vv. 1–8) now summons judgment on a people who will not have their own salvation.

Calvin: the threat seems to clash with the consolation, yet it is mercy to the faithful and a stripping of hypocrites. Believers must not lose courage when ruin draws near; the self-secure must not clutch promises that do not belong to them. Beasts of the field are enemies of every kind—Babylon chiefly, and others after—called in by God, not by chance.

The gathering of outcasts (v. 8) and the devouring of a neglected flock stand in one book. Providence can restore and still judge shepherds who toast while the wall is down.

Wesley: his—Israel’s. Watchmen are priests and teachers; ignorance is most shameful in them, and hereby he supposes the people’s ignorance too. Silent dogs: slothful, negligent in instructing, unwilling to reprove sin.

Office does not equal sight. Teachers who will not bark leave the flock exposed. The failure is culpable—knowledge was their charge; slumber is chosen. Grace that could have made them faithful watchmen is resisted in the pulpit before it is resisted in the pew.

Calvin: the reason for destruction is wicked princes and pastors—not that the people are innocent, but that this is the beginning of the evil. Watchmen include prophets and also judges, kings, the two eyes of the body. If they are unfaithful, no plague is more destructive. Blindness is want of knowledge of duty; dumb dogs are sloth and indifference.

God takes good guides from a people he intends to punish for ingratitude. Shepherds out-slept by ordinary dogs ought to be ashamed. When lazy or savage beasts replace good pastors, acknowledge wrath; destruction is not far off.

Wesley: they regard neither God’s glory nor the people’s good, but only the satisfaction of their own base desires. Quarter—in their several stations. Appetite is the theology of the post.

Classical Arminians: gain as a way is a free, guilty turn. Shepherds without understanding still know enough to feed themselves. The contrast with vv. 1–8 is sharp—foreigners holding the covenant while Israel’s teachers hold a purse.

Calvin’s third vice: insatiable avarice. Lazy toward government, ravenous toward food. They look to their ways—each consults his own advantage, as if born for himself. From his end: every one in his place, bent on gain, drawing everything to himself without attending to the office.

No one given up to wicked desires can serve God; the man laboring to amass wealth will not build the Church. Avarice is a blindness pastors must flee if they would be faithful. Isaiah’s complaint is not a curiosity of his century; bad pastors are a recurring judgment.

Wesley: they say it to fellow-priests or jolly companions. Fill ourselves—drink not only to delight but to drunkenness, dreadful security and contempt of God, abandoning care of their own or the people’s souls.

Tomorrow as a larger today is unbelief in a toast. The watchmen who would not bark now cannot see the beasts already invited (v. 9). Grace still calls shepherds to wake; this verse shows how a whole order can refuse.

Calvin: after avarice and carelessness, desperate obstinacy. They fetch wine against the word, not merely against temperance. Mental drunkenness tramples warnings. “As today, so tomorrow”—if it is well today, it shall be well tomorrow; let us not be miserable before the time. They mock God’s gentleness while he suspends judgment.

When this last medicine is rejected, ruin is near. Let every one examine himself and perceive wrath at a distance, that it may not attack unprepared. The house of prayer for all peoples and the drunken watchman belong to one prophecy: God gathers, and God also hands a neglected flock to the beasts.