The two brief sections explaining the reasons for Judah's judgment (vv. 13-17 and 24-25) give way to fuller clarification of these reasons here. This section is the climax of Isaiah's message in chapter 5.
5:26 The Judahites had taunted God to act in judgment and had concluded that because He had not destroyed them He could not. The prophet now revealed that Yahweh, as sovereign not only over their nation but over all nations, was preparing to call a foreign power to punish them (e.g., Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia). All He had to do was raise a flag or whistle and they would respond swiftly, even though they resided in a remote part of the earth.
5:27-29 Israel's enemy was ready and prepared to do the Lord's bidding. She would devour Judah as hungry lions consume their prey.
5:30 The enemy's attack would be as irresistible as the pounding of waves on a shore.66Israel would find no hope by looking to the land for help because the clouds of God's wrath would darken it and make it foreboding. Israel would find no help anywhere, neither from sea nor from land.
This prophecy looks at a judgment coming on Judah and Jerusalem that was not far away in time. Perhaps the Assyrian invasion of the land that took place at the end of the eighth century (in 701 B.C.) fulfilled it. Judah receded to a low level from which she did not recover after this invasion. Perhaps it is also significant that the founding of Rome occurred about this time since it was another power that God raised up to humble His people.
"Thus Isaiah ends his preface. The message of the first two sections (1:2-31; 2:1-4:6) is that human sin cannot ultimately frustrate God's purposes and that, in God, mercy triumphs over wrath. But the third section (5:1-30) poses a shattering question: When the Lord has done all (5:4), must the darkness of divine wrath close in and the light flicker and fade? This was the day of crisis in which Isaiah ministered: a crisis for humankind, for the day of wrath has come and a crisis for God: can mercy be exhausted and defeated?"67
