Isaiah 28
Isaiah 28 begins with a word of woe over the northern kingdom, called here by the name of its chief tribe, Ephraim. Its capital, Samaria, sat like a garland on a hill above lush valleys, and Isaiah turns that into a brutal picture: a crown of pride worn on the heads of revellers overcome with wine, a wreath of flowers already wilting on a drunkard's brow - whose glorious beauty is a fading flower (v. 1). The corruption has reached even the men who should know better: the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink… they err in vision, they stumble in judgment (v. 7). Yet woven through the judgment is a promise - In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people (v. 5). Where every human crown fades, the LORD Himself becomes the only crown that lasts.3
When the prophet brings God's message, the scoffers throw it back in his face as baby-talk: precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little (v. 10) - as if the word of God were fit only for toddlers being drilled in their letters. So God turns their mockery into their sentence. The very word they despised will become precept upon precept… that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken (v. 13), and since they would not hear plain Hebrew, He will speak to them with stammering lips and another tongue - the foreign speech of an invading army. The rest God offered - This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest (v. 12) - they simply would not take.
Then the oracle turns to the rulers in Jerusalem, who have built their security on a lie: We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement… we have made lies our refuge (v. 15). Against that false refuge God sets the central promise of the chapter: Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste (v. 16). One refuge is a hiding place of lies that the storm will sweep away; the other is a tested stone that cannot be moved. The chapter closes in a farmer's field, where the careful, varied work of plowing and threshing - knowing when to break the ground and how gently to handle each grain - becomes a parable of the wisdom behind God's dealings, for this also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working (v. 29).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 28:1-8Woe to the Crown of Pride
1Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! 2Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. 3The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: 4And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. 5In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people, 6And for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate. 7But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. 8For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.
The chapter opens with a cry of Woe over the northern kingdom, named for its leading tribe, Ephraim, and pictured through its capital city. Samaria stood on a hill crowned with greenery above rich, well-watered valleys, and Isaiah seizes on that image with savage irony: it is a crown of pride, but the kind of crown he means is a wreath of flowers worn at a feast - and it sits on the head… of them that are overcome with wine (v. 1). The whole leadership class is pictured as a hall full of drunken revellers, garlands slipping on their brows. And the prophet's eye goes straight to how fast it all wilts: their glorious beauty is a fading flower. A flower-crown is lovely for an hour and limp by evening; so is a glory built on indulgence and pride. He sharpens the picture again in verse 4 with the hasty fruit before the summer - the first ripe fig, so prized that whoever spots it swallows it on the spot. That is how quickly Samaria's splendour will be consumed. The deeper charge is pride: a people so pleased with their own beauty and strength that they cannot see how thin and short-lived it is. Isaiah is teaching a hard lesson the rest of the chapter will drive home - what looks most secure, when it is built on self and excess, is the very thing most ready to fall.3
Against that fading flower-crown stands a sober threat: Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth (v. 2). The drunken city is helpless; the One the Lord sends is overwhelming, and the imagery is all weather a reveller cannot stand against - hail, storm, a flood that sweeps the ground out from under. Historically this mighty and strong one is the army of Assyria, which would indeed trample Samaria; but Isaiah frames it as the Lord's own instrument, a power He hath at His command. The contrast could not be sharper. A garland of flowers against a flood of waters; a hall of stumbling drunkards against a tempest that casts everything to the earth with the hand, as a man flings something down. Verse 3 states the verdict plainly: The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet. What was worn proudly on the head will be ground under the heel. The lesson lands quietly but hard: human pride always overestimates its own strength and forgets Whose hand really holds the storm. The flower thinks itself a crown until the flood arrives.
The most disturbing note in this opening is where the drunkenness has reached: But they also have erred through wine… the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink… they err in vision, they stumble in judgment (v. 7). It is one thing for a careless crowd to be lost in drink; it is another when the men charged with seeing clearly and ruling rightly are reeling. The priest was meant to teach the people the difference between holy and profane; the prophet was meant to see - to receive and report the word of God. Here both are so far gone that the priest stumbles in judgment and the prophet errs in vision; the very organs of spiritual sight are blind drunk. Verse 8 makes the scene physically revolting: all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. Isaiah will not let us picture sin as elegant. The banquet of the proud is squalid, the leaders insensible, the holy places fouled. This is the company that, in the next verses, will mock God's messenger as a simpleton. The chapter quietly exposes the lie underneath all pride - that those most confident of their own clarity are often the ones least able to see.
Isaiah 28:9-13Precept upon Precept, Line upon Line
9Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. 10For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: 11For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. 12To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. 13But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
Now we hear the scoffers' own voice, and it drips with contempt. They sneer at the prophet: Whom shall he teach knowledge?… them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts? (v. 9) - meaning, Does he take us for babies just off the breast, that he drills us so? Then they mimic his preaching as toddler-talk: precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little (v. 10). In the Hebrew the line is almost nonsense syllables - tsav latsav, tsav latsav, qav laqav, qav laqav - the sing-song chant of a child learning letters, or the slurred, clipped speech a drunk man hears as he mocks a sermon he is too far gone to follow. Either way the insult is plain: God's word, broken into small simple pieces, is beneath them; they are too sophisticated for such elementary stuff. It is one of Scripture's sharpest portraits of how pride treats plain truth - not by arguing with it, but by sneering that it is simplistic, repetitive, childish. And there is a terrible irony coming. The very thing they despised as baby-talk - line upon line, a little at a time - is in fact exactly how a patient God teaches: gently, repeatedly, in pieces a person can actually take in. They mocked the mercy of His method.1
Verse 12 lifts the curtain on what they were actually refusing, and it is heartbreaking: To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. Underneath all the precepts and lines, the word God was speaking to this exhausted, dissipated nation was an offer of rest. Not a heavier burden - rest. Not another rule to grind them down, but the way for the weary to finally lay their weariness down and be refreshed. This is the great surprise tucked inside the chapter: the simple, repeated word they mocked as fit only for babies was in truth the road to peace, the relief they were drinking themselves senseless trying to find. And the verdict on them is just five words: yet they would not hear. Not could not - would not. The rest was held out, named, offered. They turned from it. It is a sober thing to see how a people can be so proud, so deadened by indulgence, that they reject the very peace they are aching for - because it comes in a form too plain, too humble, too much like being treated as a child who still has things to learn. The refreshing was right there. They would not take it.
Because they would not hear, God hands their own mockery back to them as judgment: But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken (v. 13). The identical syllables they had chanted in scorn now become the cadence of their undoing. The word they would not lean on as a foundation becomes a step that gives way, so that they fall backward, and be broken. This is one of the gravest patterns in all of Scripture: the same word of God is rest to those who receive it and ruin to those who refuse it - not because the word changes, but because of what the heart does with it. Refused mercy hardens into judgment. And verse 11 has already named the form that judgment will take: with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. Since they would not hear God's message in their own plain language, they will hear it in a foreign one - the strange speech of an invading army in their streets. The God who spoke gently, line by line, will at last speak in a tongue they cannot mock and cannot misunderstand. The mercy despised becomes the sentence pronounced.
Isaiah 28:14-22A Sure Foundation
14Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. 15Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: 16Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. 17Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. 18And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. 19From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report. 20For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it. 21For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act. 22Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.
The oracle now turns south, to the rulers in Jerusalem, and names what they have trusted in: Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement… for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves (v. 15). This is not a literal pact with demons; it is the boast of leaders who believe they have outwitted disaster. Most likely it points to the political scheming of the day - a treaty with Egypt or some foreign power they were sure would shield them when the Assyrian scourge came sweeping through. They thought they had made a deal so clever that destruction itself would pass over them: when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us. But God names the true nature of their security in two devastating words: lies and falsehood. Their refuge was a hiding place built of untruth - the deals, the spin, the self-assurance that they were the exception who would escape what others would not. It is a portrait of every false security: the deep, often unspoken conviction that the reckoning coming for everyone else will somehow skip me, because I have arranged things, because I am clever, because I have hidden myself well. Isaiah lets them say it out loud so the next verse can answer it - and the answer is a stone.
Against the refuge of lies God sets the great promise of the chapter: Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste (v. 16). Every word is weighed. God is the one who acts - I lay - not the schemers; and what He lays is not a treaty or a wall of lies but a stone. It is a tried stone, tested and proven, not an untested gamble. It is a precious corner stone - the cornerstone, the first stone set, the one every other line in the building is measured against. And it is a sure foundation, the Hebrew doubling the word for emphasis: a foundation that is founded, settled, immovable. Over against a hiding place that the flood will sweep away, God offers bedrock. Then comes the promise to the one who relies on it: he that believeth shall not make haste. To make haste here is to panic - to bolt, to flee in a scramble when the scourge arrives. The one who trusts this stone does not have to run, because he is standing on something that will not move. While the schemers are swept off their feet, the believer simply stands. The contrast is the whole message of the chapter in a single image: build your safety on lies and the storm carries it off; rest your weight on the stone God lays and you will still be standing when the flood has passed.3
God then picks up a builder's tools and turns them to judgment: Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place (v. 17). The same God who lays the cornerstone also stretches the measuring line and drops the plummet - the plumb line, weighted to hang dead straight - against everything the leaders have built. His standard of measure is judgment and righteousness; anything out of true with them is marked for demolition. And the verdict on the refuge of lies is swift and total: the hail sweeps it away, the waters overflow the hiding place. What they hid under cannot survive the measuring. Then Isaiah adds an image so homely it is almost unbearable: the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it (v. 20). Anyone who has lain on a bed too short, yanking at a blanket too small on a cold night, knows the picture exactly - there is no position that works, no way to get covered and comfortable. That is their false security: too small to actually shelter them, leaving them forever exposed at the head or the foot. And in verse 21 God calls His coming judgment His strange work, His strange act. Judgment is real and it is righteous, but it is strange to Him - not what His heart most delights to do. He would far rather lay the stone than swing the plummet.
Isaiah 28:23-29The Wisdom of the Plowman
23Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. 24Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? 25When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? 26For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. 27For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. 28Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. 29This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.
The chapter closes with a parable drawn straight from the fields outside the city, and it opens with a fresh summons to listen: Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech (v. 23). After all the judgment, Isaiah asks the people to watch a farmer at work and learn something about God. He begins with a question that exposes a foolish assumption: Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? (v. 24). No farmer plows endlessly. Plowing is not the goal; it is preparation. He breaks the clods, levels the ground - and then he stops plowing and starts sowing. To plow forever would be madness; the tearing-up has a purpose and a limit, and then it gives way to planting. The point for a people under God's discipline is quiet but profound. God's breaking of them is like the plowman's work: it is not endless, not pointless cruelty, not tearing for the sake of tearing. It is preparation. The plow goes only as deep and as long as it must to ready the soil for seed. A people being broken can take heart from a farmer's field - the One who plows knows exactly when to stop plowing and begin to sow.
The parable then moves from sowing to harvest, and grows even more precise: the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod (v. 27). A wise farmer does not thresh every crop the same way. Delicate seeds like dill (fitches) and cumin would be crushed to powder under a heavy threshing-sledge or cart wheel, so he beats them out gently, by hand, with a light stick. The sturdier grain gets sterner treatment - but even there he knows the limit: Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart (v. 28). He threshes the wheat enough to free the grain, but not so long or so hard that he grinds the kernel to ruin. The whole picture is of discretion - the right tool, the right pressure, the right duration for each crop, and never an ounce more. And the lesson is one of the most comforting things the chapter says about the severity we have watched all the way through it. God's dealings with people are not blunt or indiscriminate. He knows the difference between the fragile and the strong; He matches the weight of His discipline to what each one is and can bear; and He always, always stops short of destroying what He means to save. The threshing is measured by a Farmer who wants the grain, not the ruin of it.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 28 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for pinnah (v. 16, the “corner stone”), for the doubled musad musad rendered “a sure foundation,” and for the clipped, mocking syllables of verse 10 (tsav latsav, qav laqav) that the scoffers throw back at the prophet.
- Isaiah 28 ↔ 1 Peter 2 · Romans 9 & 10 · Ephesians 2Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Isaiah 28 to the rest of Scripture - the stone laid in Zion (v. 16) read alongside Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious (1 Pet. 2:6), the twice-quoted promise whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed (Rom. 9:33; 10:11), and the church built upon the foundation… Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone (Eph. 2:20).
- Isaiah 28 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 28 - the fading flower-crown of drunken Ephraim in verses 1-4, the much-discussed mocking syllables of verse 10, the foundation-stone oracle of verses 16-17 with its surveyor's line and plummet, and the agricultural parable of verses 23-29.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Woe to the Crown of Pride
- Isaiah 40:6-8All flesh is grass... The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.The same fading-flower image as verses 1 and 4 - human glory wilts; only God’s word endures.
- 1 Peter 5:4ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.The answer to verse 5 - the crown the LORD gives His people, set against every wreath that withers.
- Isaiah 62:3Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.The promise of verse 5 unfolded - the redeemed become God’s own crown and diadem.
- James 1:10-11as the flower of the grass he shall pass away... so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.The lesson of the fading flower (vv. 1, 4) - riches and pride wither like the bloom of the field.
- Proverbs 16:18Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.The root sin Isaiah names in the crown of pride (vv. 1, 3) - the haughtiness that precedes the fall.
Precept upon Precept, Line upon Line
- 1 Corinthians 14:21With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me.Paul quotes verse 11 directly - strange speech as a sign of judgment on those who would not hear the plain word.
- Matthew 11:28-29Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest... and ye shall find rest unto your souls.The rest of verse 12 offered again in person - the refreshing the weary refused, now given by Christ.
- Hebrews 4:7-9To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts... There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.The warning of verses 12-13 carried forward - a rest still offered, still able to be refused.
- Jeremiah 6:10their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the LORD is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it.The same scorn for the plain word as verses 9-10 - a people who find God’s word a thing to mock.
- Deuteronomy 28:49The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far... a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand.The judgment of verse 11 foretold in the law - a foreign tongue sent against a people who would not hear.
A Sure Foundation
- 1 Peter 2:6Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.Peter applies verse 16 directly to Christ - the tried, precious cornerstone laid in Zion.
- Romans 9:33Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.Paul quotes verse 16 - the stone in Zion, and the promise that faith in it is never put to shame.
- Ephesians 2:20built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.The cornerstone of verse 16 named - the stone that sets the line for the whole household of God.
- Psalm 118:22The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.The irony the Gospel draws out - the tried stone of verse 16 was first the stone the builders rejected.
- Luke 6:48he... laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it.The promise of verse 16 lived out - the house on the rock that the overflowing scourge cannot move.
The Wisdom of the Plowman
- Isaiah 9:6his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.The same word as verse 29 - the wisdom that is “wonderful in counsel” bears the name laid on the coming child.
- Romans 11:33O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!The wonder of verse 29 - the unsearchable wisdom behind all God’s working, breaking and building alike.
- Hebrews 12:10-11he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness... afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.The lesson of the plow and the threshing (vv. 24-28) - discipline measured for the harvest, not for ruin.
- 1 Corinthians 10:13God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.The mercy of verses 27-28 - the Farmer who never threshes past what the grain can bear.
- John 12:24Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.The hidden purpose behind the plowing and sowing of verses 24-25 - the seed broken open for a harvest.