Wake up, wake up, O Jerusalem!
You have drunk the cup of the LORD’s fury.
You have drunk the cup of terror,
tipping out its last drops.
Not one of your children is left alive
to take your hand and guide you.
These two calamities have fallen on you:
desolation and destruction, famine and war.
And who is left to sympathize with you?
Who is left to comfort you?
For your children have fainted and lie in the streets,
helpless as antelopes caught in a net.
The LORD has poured out his fury;
God has rebuked them.
But now listen to this, you afflicted ones
who sit in a drunken stupor,
though not from drinking wine.
This is what the Sovereign LORD,
your God and Defender, says:
“See, I have taken the terrible cup from your hands.
You will drink no more of my fury.
Instead, I will hand that cup to your tormentors,
those who said, ‘We will trample you into the dust
and walk on your backs.’ ” (Isaiah 51:17-23)

People are not always quick to leave their misery. Animals don’t always run from their cages. God has to take the cup of suffering from the hands of his people. They didn’t give it to him. They didn’t drop it. They didn’t cringe from it.

God painted the image of a drunk sitting in his own filth and misery, draining the last drops from his cup and looking for more. Israel was like an addict. They were so lost in their problem, they couldn’t see the way out. All they knew was the place where they were, the condition they were in. They couldn’t see the chance for something to change, for a way to escape, for sobriety. All they knew was their sin, their idolatry, their suffering. They had endlessly worshiped the gods and goddesses for generations, and for generations it had gotten them nowhere. Their gods remained silent in the face of their problems; they never spoke, they never intervened, they never granted a request. But the people insisted on going on with their gods because they saw no other way to go. There was, as far as they knew, no other way to live, no other way to be, no other thing to believe.

People easily get locked into a cycle of self-destruction. For those on the outside, like God, the solution was obvious. But until he yanked the cup from their drunken, shaking hands and lifted them up, they couldn’t comprehend that things could be any other way than the way they were. It was the only life they knew, the only life they thought was possible. The captivity in Babylon broke the cycle for them at last. What will it take for God to break your destructive cycle? Let God help you sooner rather than later.

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