Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
Drunken, but not with wine - Aeschylus has the same expression: -
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Eumen. 863.
Intoxicated with passion, not with wine.
Schultens thinks that this circumlocution, as he calls it, gradum adfert incomparabiliter majorem ; and that it means, not simply without wine, but much more than with wine. Gram. Hebrews p. 182. See his note on Job 30:38.
The bold image of the cup of God' s wrath, often employed by the sacred writers, (see note on Isaiah 1:22), is nowhere handled with greater force and sublimity than in this passage of Isaiah, Isaiah 51:17-23. Jerusalem is represented in person as staggering under the effects of it, destitute of that assistance which she might expect from her children; not one of them being able to support or to lead her. They, abject and amazed, lie at the head of every street, overwhelmed with the greatness of their distress; like the oryx entangled in a net, in vain struggling to rend it, and extricate himself. This is poetry of the first order, sublimity of the highest character.
Plato had an idea something like this: "Suppose," says he, "God had given to men a medicating potion inducing fear, so that the more any one should drink of it, so much the more miserable he should find himself at every draught, and become fearful of every thing both present and future; and at last, though the most courageous of men, should be totally possessed by fear: and afterwards, having slept off the effects of it, should become himself again." De Leg. i., near the end. He pursues at large this hypothesis, applying it to his own purpose, which has no relation to the present subject. Homer places two vessels at the disposal of Jupiter, one of good, the other of evil. He gives to some a potion mixed of both; to others from the evil vessel only: these are completely miserable. Iliad 24:527-533.
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"Two urns by Jove' s high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good;
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to these, to those distributes ills;
To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed
To taste the bad unmixed, is cursed indeed:
Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven,
He wanders outcast both of earth and heaven."
Pope
Other Adam Clarke entries containing Isaiah 51:21:
Job 21:20
Psalms 11:6
Isaiah 29:9
Isaiah 51:17
Isaiah 51:21
Jeremiah 25:16
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