John Calvin Commentary Isaiah 5:24

"Therefore as the tongue of fire devoureth the stubble, and as the dry grass sinketh down in the flame, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust; because they have rejected the law of Jehovah of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." — Isaiah 5:24 (ASV)

Therefore as the flame of fire devoureth the stubble. Lest it be thought that he has so frequently cried out without good reason, he again shows what grievous and dreadful punishment awaits the nation. He threatens utter destruction to the stubborn, because they did not allow themselves to be brought back to the right path, but obstinately resisted instruction.

He employs metaphors exceedingly well adapted to express his meaning, and better fitted to affect their hearts than if he had spoken plainly and without figurative language. He begins with a comparison, but immediately slides into a metaphor, attributing a root and branch to the nation as if it were a tree.

By these two words, he includes all the strength of the nation, whether hidden or visible, and says that the whole will be destroyed. For when the root, which alone gives strength and nourishment to the tree, becomes rotten, it is all over with the tree. Similarly, he threatens that it is all over with the nation, and that its whole strength is wasted and consumed.

Because they have rejected the law of Jehovah of hosts. He does not now list, as he did before, the particular kinds of crime by which they had provoked God's wrath, but assigns a general cause: contempt of God's law. For this, as everyone knows, is the source of everything bad.

And it is no small aggravation of their crime that, when God's will had been made known to them in His law, they acted not through ignorance or mistake, but through deep-seated malice. They shook off God's yoke and abandoned themselves to every kind of licentiousness, which was nothing less than rejecting so kind a Father and giving themselves up to be slaves of the devil. Furthermore, he accuses them of open revolt, as if to say that they were not rebellious in just one or a few instances, but could be regarded as treacherous apostates who had altogether forsaken God.

And loathed the word of the Holy One of Israel. He complains that they not only despised God's word but—what is far more shocking—turned away from it, or threw it away in wicked disdain. But if contempt for God's law is the source, head, and sum of all evil, there is nothing we should guard against more carefully than Satan taking away our reverence for it. If there are any faults to which we are prone, we should, at least, allow a remedy to be applied to them, if we do not wish, by wickedly rejecting it, to bring everlasting destruction upon ourselves.