Isaiah 28
Isaiah 28 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Isaiah 28 opens with a single, heavy word: "Woe." In Hebrew the word is hôy, and it carries the sound of a funeral. This is not a shout to get attention or a threat hurled in anger. It is a lament spoken over losses that have not yet arrived but are already certain—the kind of grief you feel when you can see where a road leads and no one will turn around. The prophet begins with the "crown of pride" of Ephraim, the northern kingdom, whose beauty is a "fading flower." Its fall is coming not because God must swoop in to punish, but because the world is morally ordered: bad choices, bad practices, and bad policies ripen into bad outcomes.
The chapter then turns that lament toward Jerusalem's own leadership, and no one escapes. The religious professionals—priest and prophet alike—reel with wine and strong drink; "they err in vision" and stumble when they should be giving sound judgment (v. 7). The political class has cut a deal it calls a "covenant with death," boasting that disaster will pass them by because, as the prophet puts it, "we have made lies our refuge" (v. 15). People, priests, and rulers have all drifted from the justice, righteousness, and compassion God intended, and each group's failure makes others stumble.
Yet the chapter is not only demolition. Into the rubble of false shelters God announces a real one: "I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone" (v. 16)—a tested cornerstone for anyone willing to trust it. Justice will be the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line, sweeping away every refuge built on falsehood. The closing image of a farmer who plows, plants, and threshes each crop differently suggests that even God's hard dealings have purpose and proportion, like the wisdom of someone who knows exactly what each field needs.
What scholars say
These two excerpts work as a pair: Walter Brueggemann and Brent Strawn explain what the opening "woe" (hôy) actually signals—grief over losses made inevitable by bad choices within a morally ordered creation—while Shannon Daley-Harris traces who in Isaiah 28 receives those hard words, from the people to the priests, prophets, and political leaders who had strayed from God's justice, righteousness, and compassion.
“The old translation, “woe,” is of special interest for understanding the oracles of Isaiah 28–31 and 33, even though the NRSV translation seems to take the term only as an attention-getter. Two features of hôy are worth noticing. First, the term refers to the sadness of death. It is an anticipation of coming grief because of loss. Second, it can refer to big trouble to come that is not the result of any direct agency but that simply arises from a set of circumstances that make the anticipated loss inescapable and inevitable. The term reflects the conviction that creation is ordered so that bad outcomes are certain to arise from bad choices, bad practices , and bad policies. Behind that guaranteed structure of moral coherence is the God of Israel, who need not directly intervene to produce such grievous outcomes.”
“In Isaiah’s day, the prophet, on God’s behalf, took to task those who were causing or letting others stumble. In Isaiah 28, the prophet was speaking difficult words to those who had strayed from God’s intended justice, righteousness, and compassion. He spoke words of woe to the people, words of warning to the priests and the prophets, words of judgment over the political leadership. People, priests, prophets, politicians—all were missing the mark. “They err in vision, they stumble in giving judgment” (v. 7b), and, later, they have “made lies [their] refuge, and in falsehood [they] have taken shelter” (v. 15b).”
What it means for you
Isaiah 28 invites an honest audit of our own refuges. What do we lean on when we are afraid—spin, denial, alliances of convenience, the comfortable lie that consequences are for other people? The chapter's funeral-toned "woe" reminds us that outcomes grow from choices; we rarely get to keep the practices and escape the harvest. But it also offers a quieter word: there is a foundation that holds. Trust built on God's justice, righteousness, and compassion does not need panic or pretense—"he who believes shall not act hastily" (v. 16). Start where the prophet starts: with the truth about where the road is leading.
Isaiah 28 in context
Isaiah 28 begins a new section of the book (chapters 28–33) marked by a series of "woe" oracles. The chapter looks first at the northern kingdom of Ephraim, whose capital Samaria fell to Assyria, then pivots to Jerusalem's own priests, prophets, and politicians, who are repeating the same mistakes—drunken leadership, scoffing, and treaties built on deception, likely with Egypt in view. The promised cornerstone in Zion (v. 16) stands at the chapter's center as the alternative to every false refuge, and the closing farmer parable defends the wisdom of God's varied dealings.