Isaiah 28:23

“Give ye ear, and hear my voice, &c.] So said the prophet, as the Targum introduces the words; and because what he was about to say was of importance, and delivered in a parabolical manner, and required attention, he makes use of a variety of words to the same purpose, to engage their attention: hearken, and hear my speech; now about to be made; listen to it, and get the understanding of it.”

“Calling attention to the following illustration from husbandry (Psa 49:1-2). As the husbandman does his different kinds of work, each in its right time and due proportion, so God adapts His measures to the varying exigencies of the several cases: now mercy, now judgments; now punishing sooner, now later (an answer to the scoff that His judgments, being put off so long, would never come at all, Isa 5:19); His object being not to destroy His people any more than the farmer's object in threshing is to destroy his crop; this vindicates God's "strange work" (Isa 28:21) in punishing His people. Compare the same image, Jer 24:6; Hos 2:23; Mat 3:12.”

“28:23 Listen to me: The analogy that follows was written as a wisdom poem, with Isaiah calling on his audience to pay careful attention and to discern what is right.”

“Isa 1:2; Deu 32:1; Jer 22:29; Rev 2:7, Rev 2:11, Rev 2:14, Rev 2:29 Isaiah 28:24”

“The address of the prophet is here apparently closed. But an essential ingredient is still wanting to the second half, to make it correspond to the first. There is still wanting the fringe of promise coinciding with Isa 28:5, Isa 28:6. The prophet has not only to alarm the scoffers, that if possible he may pluck some of them out of the fire through fear ( Jdg 5:23); he has also to comfort believers, who yield themselves as disciples to him and to the word of God ( Isa 8:16). He does this here in a very peculiar manner. He has several times assumed the tone of the mashal, more especially in chapter 26; but here the consolation is dressed up in a longer parabolical address, which sets forth in…”