21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:
21 Therefore hear this, you afflicted one, made drunk, but not with wine.
21 Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted, who are drunk, but not with wine:
21 Therefore listen, please, you with your splitting headaches, You who are nursing the hangovers that didn't come from drinking wine.
21 Therefore please hear this, you afflicted, And drunk but not with wine.
21 But now listen to this, you afflicted ones who sit in a drunken stupor, though not from drinking wine.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Isaiah 51:21
Commentary on Isaiah 51:17-23
(Read Isaiah 51:17-23)
God calls upon his people to mind the things that belong to their everlasting peace. Jerusalem had provoked God, and was made to taste the bitter fruits. Those who should have been her comforters, were their own tormentors. They have no patience by which to keep possesion of their own souls, nor any confidence in God's promise, by which to keep possession of its comfort. Thou art drunken, not as formerly, with the intoxicating cup of Babylon's idolatries, but with the cup of affliction. Know, then, the cause of God's people may for a time seem as lost, but God will protect it, by convincing the conscience, or confounding the projects, of those that strive against it. The oppressors required souls to be subjected to them, that every man should believe and worship as they would have them. But all they could gain by violence was, that people were brought to outward hypocritical conformity, for consciences cannot be forced.