Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand the report? Them that are weaned from the milk, withdrawn from the breasts?
This question comes right after a scene of priests and prophets staggering in drink. It asks who can be taught at all, and the answer is startling: babies just off the breast. Commentators read it as God's own beginner's teaching, given to a people who could take nothing more — and they follow what happens when even that is refused.
Strong drink had left Judah's priests and prophets confused. They erred in vision and stumbled in judgment. God met them where they were.
In vain had God met their weakness, and fed them with infants' food.
Another writer ties this teaching directly to Israel's departure from God.
When Israel departs from God, God sends, as to children, precept upon precept, line upon line.
Against the drunken crowd stands a smaller group. The verse names them: those weaned from milk. They are the ones who can still be taught.
Yet even so, a remnant of His people would still be found. They would wear not a crown of pride but a crown of glory, in the Lord Himself. Most of the people had gone astray through wine and stumbled in judgment. But this remnant would be like little children, who learn a little at a time, step by step.
What sounds like an insult is also God's normal way of teaching. Here the teacher is the Lord Himself, working by His Spirit.
So we may accept that now, as then, there are stages of growth in the divine life. God unfolds His word to each believer to suit their differing capacity. When the Lord by His Spirit teaches knowledge and makes people understand wisdom, He does not hand over a tidy, finished system of theology. He gives the truth a bit at a time: "precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little" (Isa. 28:9-10).
A nursing child takes everything through someone else. A weaned child learns to feed. One writer turns that picture on believers who lean too much on other people.
Is this not the secret of much of our stunted growth, our lack of spiritual strength and discernment? Does it not explain the way we hang on others, accept leaders without thinking, and follow the crowd? We must use what God gives us for the good of others. We must be exercised at every step of our path. We must be weaned from depending even on the best of people (Isa. 28:9). Without that, how can we learn, or grow, or become strong? We cannot. We must learn to find Christ enough.
They slighted that simple teaching and would not have it. So God spoke to them again — this time through the speech of an invading army.
Another dealing is needed, and it will surely follow… They had slighted that childlike instruction, so He would not whip them with it. He would whip them with the foreign speech of enemies instead. They would not have His words of rest for the weary, so they had to hear a nation they could not understand. It was a judgment on their unbelief.
This is not only Israel's story. The same rule holds wherever God gives light.
When people resist, the result is blindness — and it is all the greater because it matches the light they refused. If someone receives the first testimony, more is always added. To him that has, more is given, and he shall have more abundance… Those who receive the first grace receive all the rest, right up to glory, and go from strength to strength.
Paul later quotes the verses that follow this one.
The prophet goes on to show that God might stoop to deal in this simple way with most of the people. He might even use stammering lips and another tongue. Yet they refuse to hear, and they are broken. The Apostle Paul refers to this passage in 1 Corinthians 14:21-22, to show that tongues are a sign to unbelievers rather than believers.
- Milk. Drink had left the priests and prophets stumbling. So God fed His people the food of infants. He met their weakness instead of matching their pride.
- Weaning. He teaches the weaned. They no longer lean on others, not even on the best of people. They find Christ enough.
- Degrees. God's normal method is not a finished system, handed over at once. He gives truth by stages, suited to what each believer can take.
- Refusal. Light received brings more light. Light refused brings a deeper blindness.
- Strange tongues. The people who would not hear the simple lesson heard the speech of invaders instead. Paul takes up that same word: tongues are a sign for unbelievers.
For [it is] precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little. ...
Isaiah 28 opens with a woe against the drunkards of Ephraim. By verse 9, priests and prophets who cannot think straight are sizing up the prophet's message. Verse 10 is the sound of that message reduced to a nursery rhyme — and commentators read the jingle in more than one way.
One writer insists the drink language means more than literal drunkenness:
We should not take the drunkenness here in a merely literal sense. It stands for their wildly excited, dazed and stupefied state. They are given up to their own pleasure and self-indulgence, to the shame of the true God. Drunkenness among men has frightful natural effects. In a wide moral sense, that will be the condition of these proud, senseless men of Ephraim.
God stooped to the hearers' level, and it changed nothing:
God had met their weakness and fed them with infants' food, but it was all in vain… Another dealing is needed, and will surely follow.
Commentators differ on whose voice speaks verse 10. Some hear God Himself, dealing with a straying people the way a parent deals with a small child:
When Israel departs from God, God sends, as to children, precept upon precept, line upon line… God cannot stop bearing witness until He has used up every means of bringing them back to Himself.
Others hear the leaders instead. One outline of Isaiah heads verses 9–10 as "the prophet mocked" — the repetition being their sneer at Isaiah's simple, step-by-step teaching (Arno Clemens Gaebelein). Either way, they despise the childlike teaching.
Refusing the light has a result of its own:
Resistance brings on those who resist a blindness that is all the greater, because it matches the light they refused. If someone receives the first testimony, more is always added. It is given to him who has, and he shall have more abundance… The more God shows Himself, the more the heart's natural opposition shows itself. Those who receive the first grace receive the rest until glory, and go from strength to strength.
The same phrases come back in verse 13, now as a sentence rather than a lesson:
The prophet goes on to show that God might stoop to deal in this simple way with the mass of the people. He might even use "stammering lips and another tongue." Yet they refuse to hear, and they are broken. Paul refers to this passage in 1 Corinthians 14:21-22. He shows that tongues are a sign to unbelievers rather than believers.
Another writer names what took its place:
He would not punish them with the childlike instruction they had slighted, but with the foreign speech of enemies… It was a judgment on their unbelief.
Taken positively, the verse describes how truth still reaches a believer:
So we may accept that now, as then, there are stages of growth in the divine life. God unfolds His word to each believer to suit their differing capacity. When the Lord by His Spirit teaches knowledge and makes men understand wisdom, He does not hand over a neat, finished system of doctrine. He gives the truth by degrees: "precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little."
One writer traces a child's hardening against Scripture back to the way it was taught:
How else can we explain a strange fact? So many children of steady Christian parents, above all their sons, grow up with an unbelievable dislike — even disgust — for everything called "religious." The natural heart's hostility to God and His Word does not explain it. That reason would apply to every child of believing parents. Is it not rather that such parents, and fathers most of all, have handed divine truth to their children in a stern, law-like spirit, as at Mount Sinai? Then "the Word of the Lord was to them precept upon precept… that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken."
- Condition — The hearers are drunk in more than one sense: excited, dazed, self-indulgent, fit for nothing but the simplest teaching.
- Kindness — God met that weakness with infants' food, teaching line by line as a father teaches a small child.
- Contempt — Commentators differ. Is verse 10 God's patient method, or the leaders mocking it? Either way, they despised the simple word.
- Consequence — They refused the gentle teaching, so it came back as judgment in the foreign speech of an invading people. Paul uses the verse to show that tongues are a sign to unbelievers.
- Continuation — God still gives His word by degrees, not as a finished system. Teach it that way, and gently: a stern delivery can drive a hearer backward.