Scripture Daily

Context No. 1118 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 51:17-23: in context

17Awake, awake! Stand up, Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the LORD’s hand the cup of his wrath. You have drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it. 18There is no one to guide her among all the sons to whom she has given birth; and there is no one who takes her by the hand among all the sons whom she has brought up. 19These two things have happened to you— who will grieve with you?— desolation and destruction, and famine and the sword. How can I comfort you? 20Your sons have fainted. They lie at the head of all the streets, like an antelope in a net. They are full of the LORD’s wrath, the rebuke of your God. 21Therefore now hear this, you afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine: 22Your Lord GOD, your God who pleads the cause of his people, says, “Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my wrath. You will not drink it any more. 23I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to your soul, ‘Bow down, that we may walk over you;’ and you have laid your back as the ground, like a street to those who walk over.”

God calls the shattered city to wake up. Jerusalem has drunk from the LORD's hand the cup of his wrath, drained the bowl of staggering to its dregs, and now lies helpless, her sons fainting in the streets with no one to guide her or take her by the hand. Desolation and destruction, famine and sword have come, and she has no comforter. But then the turn: your Lord, who pleads the cause of his people, says, behold, I have taken the cup of staggering out of your hand; you will never drink it again. I will put it into the hand of those who tormented you.

The controlling image is a cup, the cup of God's wrath, which Jerusalem has had to drink to the bottom. It is a terrible picture of judgment, staggering like a drunk, sons collapsing in the streets, no comfort anywhere. And then, with no explanation of how, God simply announces that he has taken the cup from her hand and she will drink it no more. The wrath she had to bear is removed, lifted out of her grasp by the very God who gave it, and she is promised she will never drink it again. For the Christian this points unmistakably forward. There was another who, in a garden, prayed about a cup, the cup of God's wrath, and asked if it might pass, and then drank it to the dregs so that his people would never have to. The cup Jerusalem drank, and could not survive, is the cup Jesus took into his own hand at the cross. That is how God can say to his people, you will not drink it any more: not because the wrath vanished, but because Another drank it in their place. The cup was removed from our hand because it was placed in his.

Do I grasp that the cup of wrath I could not survive was taken from my hand and drunk by Christ, so that God says over me, you will not drink it any more?

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