Isaiah 5:11

The Message

Doom to those who get up early and start drinking booze before breakfast, Who stay up all hours of the night drinking themselves into a stupor. They make sure their banquets are well-furnished with harps and flutes and plenty of wine, But they’ll have nothing to do with the work of God, pay no mind to what he is doing. Therefore my people will end up in exile because they don’t know the score. Their “honored men” will starve to death and the common people die of thirst. Sheol developed a huge appetite, swallowing people nonstop! Big people and little people alike down that gullet, to say nothing of all the drunks. The down-and-out on a par with the high-and-mighty, Windbag boasters crumpled, flaccid as a punctured bladder. But by working justice, God-of-the-Angel-Armies will be a mountain. By working righteousness, Holy God will show what “holy” is. And lambs will graze as if they owned the place, Kids and calves right at home in the ruins.

Cross References

Proverbs 20:1

Wine makes you mean, beer makes you quarrelsome— a staggering drunk is not much fun.

Isaiah 28:1

Doom to the pretentious drunks of Ephraim, shabby and washed out and seedy— Tipsy, sloppy-fat, beer-bellied parodies of a proud and handsome past. Watch closely: God has someone picked out, someone tough and strong to flatten them. Like a hailstorm, like a hurricane, like a flash flood, one-handed he’ll throw them to the ground. Samaria, the party hat on Israel’s head, will be knocked off with one blow. It will disappear quicker than a piece of meat tossed to a dog.

Habakkuk 2:15

“Who do you think you are— inviting your neighbors to your drunken parties, Giving them too much to drink, roping them into your sexual orgies? You thought you were having the time of your life. Wrong! It’s a time of disgrace. All the time you were drinking, you were drinking from the cup of God’s wrath. You’ll wake up holding your throbbing head, hung over— hung over from Lebanon violence, Hung over from animal massacres, hung over from murder and mayhem, From multiple violations of place and people.

Habakkuk 2:5

“Note well: Money deceives. The arrogant rich don’t last. They are more hungry for wealth than the grave is for cadavers. Like death, they always want more, but the ‘more’ they get is dead bodies. They are cemeteries filled with dead nations, graveyards filled with corpses. Don’t give people like this a second thought. Soon the whole world will be taunting them:

Luke 21:34

“But be on your guard. Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping. Otherwise, that Day is going to take you by complete surprise, spring on you suddenly like a trap, for it’s going to come on everyone, everywhere, at once. So, whatever you do, don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Pray constantly that you will have the strength and wits to make it through everything that’s coming and end up on your feet before the Son of Man.”

1 Samuel 25:36

When Abigail got home she found Nabal presiding over a huge banquet. He was in high spirits—and very, very drunk. So she didn’t tell him anything of what she’d done until morning. But in the morning, after Nabal had sobered up, she told him the whole story. Right then and there he had a heart attack and fell into a coma. About ten days later God finished him off and he died.