56:9-12 Desolating judgments are called for; and this severe rebuke of the rulers and teachers of the Jewish church, is applicable to other ages and places. It is bad with a people when their shepherds slumber, and are eager after the world. Let us pray the Great Shepherd to send us pastors after his own heart, who will feed us with knowledge, that we may rejoice in his holy name, and that believers may be daily added to the church.

Verse 12. - Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine. Here we have mention of a third defect. The prophets of the time are not only negligent of their duty, and covetous, but they are given to excess in wine and to long revels, such as even the heathen considered to be disgraceful (comp. Isaiah 28:7, where both priests and prophets are taxed with habitual drunkenness). To-morrow shall be as this day; i.e. the drinking shall continue - we will have a two days' bout of it. And much more abundant; rather, very exceedingly abundant. There is no comparison of one day with the other; but simply a promise that on both days the drinking shall be without stint. (On the drunkenness occasionally prevalent in Oriental countries, see Herod.,1:133; Xen., 'Cyrop.,' 8:8, § 10; Dur. Samuel Fr., 13; and compare the remarks of Sir H. Rawlinson on the inebriety of the modern Persians in the author's ' Herodotus,' vol. 1. p. 219, edition of 1862.)

Come ye, say they,.... Either to their fellow bishops and priests, when got together, jovially carousing; or to the common people, encouraging them in luxury and intemperance:

I will fetch wine; out of his cellar, having good store of it, and that of the best, hence called "priests' wine"; and so, at Paris and Louvain, the Popish priests called their wine "vinum theologicum":

and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; fill their bellies and skins full of it till drunken with it; the drunkenness of priests in Popish counties is notorious, which seems here to be taxed and prophesied of:

for tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant; the morrow shall be as good, and merry, and jovial a day as this, and better; and we shall have as much wine and strong drink to drink, or more; this they say to encourage their companions to drink, and not spare, and to put away the evil day far from them. The Targum is,

"saying, come, let us take wine, and be inebriated with old wine; and our dinner tomorrow shall be better than today, large, very large.''

12. fetch wine—language of the national teachers challenging one another to drink. Barnes translates, "I will take another cup" (Isa 5:11).

to-morrow, &c.—Their self-indulgence was habitual and intentional: not merely they drink, but they mean to continue so.

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