Awake, awake!
    Rise up, Jerusalem,
you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord
    the cup of his wrath,
you who have drained to its dregs
    the goblet that makes people stagger.
18 Among all the children she bore
    there was none to guide her;
among all the children she brought up
    there was none to take her by the hand.
19 These double calamities have come upon you –
    who can comfort you? –
ruin and destruction, famine and sword –
    who can console you?
20 Your children have fainted;
    they lie at every street corner,
    like antelope caught in a net.
They are filled with the wrath of the Lord,
    with the rebuke of your God.

21 Therefore hear this, you afflicted one,
    made drunk, but not with wine.
22 This is what your Sovereign Lord says,
    your God, who defends his people:
‘See, I have taken out of your hand
    the cup that made you stagger;
from that cup, the goblet of my wrath,
    you will never drink again.
23 I will put it into the hands of your tormentors,
    who said to you,
    “Fall prostrate that we may walk on you.”
And you made your back like the ground,
    like a street to be walked on.’

I want to add a postscript to yesterday’s thought. I said in it that the worst was behind the people of God who are addressed here, and from heaven’s point of view it was. Their condemnation was behind them, but it was hard for them to feel forgiven. The worst was behind them, but there had not yet been a change of circumstances. Nevertheless, they were being called to stir themselves to believe and act out their true destiny in God.

The world says, ‘Seeing is believing.’ But to people of faith, ‘believing is seeing.’

‘They have been carried off into exile and are still there. Nothing has changed in their outward circumstances. There is terror on every side, and the oppressor is still bent on their destruction (13b). What they are being asked to respond to is not their circumstances (which will change later), but the word of God that has come to them.’ Barry Webb: ‘Isaiah’, p.206.