51:17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drank at the hand of the LORD the {p} cup of his fury; thou hast drank the dregs of the cup of trembling, [and] wrung [them] out.
(p) You have been justly punished and sufficiently as Isa 40:2 and this punishment in the elect is by measure, and according as God gives grace to hear it: but in the reprobate it is the just vengeance of God to drive them to an insensibleness and madness, as Jer 25:15,16.
51:17 Awake - Heb. Rouse up thyself: come out of that forlorn condition in which thou hast so long been. Stand up - Upon thy feet, O thou who hast been thrown to the ground. Drunk - Who hast been sorely afflicted. The cup - Which strikes him that drinks it with deadly horror. And wrung - Drunk every drop of it.
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.
