Isaiah 29:9
9 Stay [mahahh] yourselves, and wonder [tamahh]; cry ye out [sha`a`], and
cry [sha`a`]: they are drunken [shakar], but not with wine [yayin];
they stagger [nuwa`], but not with strong drink
[shekar].
KJV-Interlinear
9 Astonish yourselves and be astonished; blind
yourselves and be blind! Be drunk, but not with wine; stagger, but not with
strong drink! ESV
Isaiah proclaims the ultimate
failure of people who continue in their dysfunctional ways. They refuse to learn. They refuse to be taught. They refuse to
pursue the spiritual growth process as defined by God and therefore they become
no better than a drunken man.
The drunk has dulled
senses. The drunk cannot see
clearly. The drunk cannot gauge where he
is or what he is doing or where he is going.
And these are in terms of extremes.
A drunk is not one who has had one or two drinks, but one who has
committed himself to a life pattern of constant and perpetual drinking. His entire life is disoriented and failed.
And that is the person,
without drinking, yet becomes like a drunk, but in the spiritually
dysfunctional sense.
No spiritual life, no
orientation to life. And a confused
person cannot get through life as God intends.
They merely exist until their life is over.
Astonish or stay, ‘mahahh,’
means to stare without seeing, to be dumb or dumbfounded. And it describes a person who looks and looks
and looks at a thing but cannot figure it out. They see it, but do not see
it. They do not comprehend it. They just stare.
And this is what people
without doctrine in their soul, do. They
stare but never see. Life and truth are
there right in front of them, and yet it is their own resistance to learning
doctrine, that prevents them from seeing truth.
They do it all to themselves.
Cry out and cry, ‘sha a,’
refers to crying to at some unbelievable spectacle as when one watches a
fireworks show or something spectacular.
And yet their eyes are glazed over, seeing only what they wish to see,
and are amazed at the life that they have invented for themselves. They are impressed with themselves.
And so, it is made clear that
the blindness is the fault of the individual due to their refusal or
indifference or antagonism toward learning truth.
They reject truth, not
believing that they have anything to learn. They stagger through life, never
knowing that they are staggering.
And so God allows them to
exercise their own choices in life, even when they refuse to learn doctrine and
thus become disoriented by means of their own decisions.
And this is what the Bible
means. God brings a strong delusion such
that they cannot see, cannot understand.
People do this to themselves.
God does everything possible
to help people learn truth, but too often people resist learning, and then they
have only themselves to blame.
