Then, when the last material hope of Judah fell, fell her religion too. The Egyptian disappointment, while it drove the rulers out of their false policies, drove the people out of their unreal worship. What had been a city of devotees became in a moment a city of revellers. Formerly all had been sacrifices and worship, but now feasting and blasphemy. _Behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die_ (_id._ 13. The reference of ver. 12 is probably to chap. i.). Now all Isaiah's ministry had been directed just against these two things: the Egyptian alliance and the purely formal observance of religion--trust in the world and trust in religiousness. And together both of these had given way, and the Assyrian was at the gates. Truly it was the hour of Isaiah's vindication. Yet--and this is the tragedy--it had come too late. The prophet could not use it. The two things he said would collapse had collapsed, but for the people there seemed now no help to be justified from the thing which he said would remain. What was the use of the city's deliverance, when the people themselves had failed! The feelings of triumph, which the prophet might have expressed, were swallowed up in unselfish grief over the fate of his wayward and abandoned Jerusalem. _What aileth thee now_--and in these words we can hear the old man addressing his fickle child, whose changefulness by this time he knew so well--_what aileth thee now that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops_--we see him standing at his door watching this ghastly holiday--_O thou that art full of shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous town?_ What are you rejoicing at in such an hour as this, when you have not even the bravery of your soldiers to celebrate, when you are without that pride which has brought songs from the lips of a defeated people as they learned that their sons had fallen with their faces to the foe, and has made even the wounds of the dead borne through the gate lips of triumph, calling to festival! _For thy slain are not slain with the sword, neither are they dead in battle._ _All thy chiefs fled in heaps; Without bow they were taken: All thine that were found were taken in heaps; From far had they run. Wherefore I say, Look away from me; Let me make bitterness bitterer by weeping. Press not to comfort me For the ruin of the daughter of my people._