The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 2 — Section 162

Ver. 20.-The vanity of irreligion. In a few vigorous touches the prophet sketches the utter vanity and the condemnation of idolatry. The idolatrous man: 1. Is relying on that which will miserably disappoint Lim; what he takes for food turns out to be nothing better than "ashes." 2. ls misled into the most grievous error; be has been "turned aside" from the high way of truth. 3. Is continually enacting a falsehood ; there is "a lie in his right hand." Idolatry is the supreme mistake as well as the most heinous sin. But what is palpably and particularly true of this great iniquity is essentially true of all sin. A sinful life is- I. A LIFE OF SADDEST INBUFFIOIENOY. "He feedeth on ashes." Like the "apples of Sodom," like the "little book" of the prophet's vision (Rev. x.), a guilty action (or a sinful life) is very pleasant on the outside or at the beginning; but within, afterwards, it is bitter and disappointing in the la.st degree. Crime begins in successful violence or enriching fraud ; it ends in the prison or the garret, Vice begins in unholy pleasure, in unprincipled companionship; it ends in distracting pain, in mortal sickness, in cruel loneliness. Ungodliness begins in the delights of eager but unhallowed ambition, of happy but unsanctified affection; it ends in weariness, in heart-ache, in the discovery that earthly distinctions and human love cannot fill the heart that God made for himself, cannot gladden and ennoble the life that he fashioned for his service. A life spent without God, devoted to selfish gratification, is a life of deep di~app~intment; the mistaken sinner finds out that the delectable food which be plucked with such keen anticipation is only ashes between his teeth. II. A LIFE OF SERIOUS DEFLECTION. "A deceived heart hath turned them aside." The straight road is the path of piety, of purity, of truthfulness, of sobriety, of justice, of kindness. When men "see light in God's light," they recognize this path as the one right road in which a man should walk, any deviation from which is error- a spiritual wandering. But when the heart is deceived, when the soul is corrupted by "the deceitfulness of sin," when the inward "eye is evil" and consequently the whole body is full of darkness, then it seems to the deluded spirit that the wrong way is the right one, that the green, downward slopes of folly and sin are the highway of wisdom. And the worst of it is that the path of sin does not run near to and parallel with the way of life; it goes off from it at an angle which ia continually increasing, so that the further a man goes along this evil road the greater distance be is away from that in which be should be walking. Every step takes the mistaken traveller further from his course, And when men havfl wholly lost sight of the beauties of holiness, of the uu. XLIV. 1-28.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 1G7