“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
Isaiah 5:20 NASB1995
Well, here we are at probably the most memorable “woe” that Isaiah brings forth. I thought the image that ChatGPT created was intriguing - here is the explanation:
The Upside-Down Marketplace
This would combine all three comparisons in one coherent scene.
In an ancient marketplace, a respected merchant or civic leader is presenting rotten fruit as something valuable, while a crowd eagerly admires it. Nearby, baskets of beautiful fresh fruit are being discarded.
A servant pours clean honey or sweet wine onto the ground while carefully preserving a bitter, foul-looking drink in an ornate vessel.
And all this occurs beneath a covered arcade where the crowd has chosen to remain in deep shadow even though brilliant sunlight fills the open street just a few steps away.
Why it works: We could visually incorporate evil/good, darkness/light, and bitter/sweet without making the image feel like three separate illustrations pasted together.
Where do I start? I’ve seen this verse coming in the headlights ever since I began studying Isaiah (and Isaiah 5, in particular). I could write a lengthy polemic about the moral relativism that is strangling our modern culture. I could write a plea for the many mainstream churches who now gleefully call evil good and good evil and court those who wish to remain in the darkness. I could go get a soapbox and stand at a public corner and rant about sin and corruption while getting pelted with rotten fruit and hearing foul language.
Perhaps a few Bible verses from over the millennia will help us see that this is not a new problem:
“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.”
Genesis 6:5-13 NASB1995
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Judges 21:25 NASB1995
“After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”
Then the disciples *came and *said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?” But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
Peter said to Him, “Explain the parable to us.” Jesus said, “Are you still lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated? But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.””
Matthew 15:10-20 NASB1995
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
2 Timothy 3:1-7 NASB1995
I haven’t studied 2 Timothy in-depth yet, but these famous verses show that the evil impulses are perpetual and Paul is, indeed, a prophetic voice. Interestingly, one usually only sees 2 Timothy 3:1-5 quoted, but I added the next two verses to this excerpt because they hit me like a brick. I am a woman, defined by God and my DNA, but I have observed, especially since coming back to faith, that the some of the worst perpetrators of “calling evil good and good evil” are influential women in politics and entertainment, women who have become ordained ministers in mainstream churches like the ELCA, and those blighted souls who are caught up in social media cesspools like Tik Tok. I can say from personal experience that the siren call of feminism is a path into lonely darkness and bitterness (thanks to the Lord for bringing me back into the light).
The current case being tried in Massachusetts with the woman who methodically planned and executed the cold-blooded murder of her three children, even timing the errands that she sent her husband on so she could commit these acts and then tried to kill herself before he returned, is a classic case of how many women are never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. She (I won’t include her name) is pleading “post-partum psychosis” as the reason for this evil act. Instead of condemning her for the murder of the children, her sycophants are pouring money into funding, rallying in the streets with “heart” signs, and posting strange videos of themselves screaming in front of their own children and littering social media with allegations that the father committed the murders, even though she has confessed. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” indeed.
Isaiah’s terms can also be applied to the many candidates for public office who are promising to defund the police, empty the prisons, and open the borders to anyone who wants to cross. These promises are guaranteed to result in a very uncivil society where hardened criminals and terrorists rule the day and the night. There is a term for this type of thinking - it’s called suicidal empathy, defined as a misplaced compassion that fails to use reason and see the long-term consequences of a policy. It is having excessive empathy for someone who would destroy you in a heartbeat.
I think it is worthwhile to share some of the absolutely superb commentary from Enduring Word on this passage in 2 Timothy; David Guzik does a fine job relating these words to the present day (his examples are perhaps a bit dated, so there is even more to point at in 2026):
a. Men will be lovers of themselves: This is certainly characteristic of our present age, when men and women are encouraged to love themselves. People are told to love themselves unconditionally and that such self-love is the foundation for a healthy human personality.
i. We don’t need to be encouraged to love ourselves; we naturally have such a love. Neither should we be taught to hate ourselves, but as Paul said in Romans 12:3: For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. We must see ourselves as we really are – both the bad of what we are in the flesh and the glory of what we are in Jesus Christ.
ii. This love of self is the foundation for all the depravity that follows in Paul’s description: “But readers should note that lovers of themselves, which comes first, can be regarded as the source from which all the others that follow spring.” (Calvin)
iii. “It is no accident that the first of these qualities will be a life that is centred in self. The adjective used is philautos, which means self-loving. Love of self is the basic sin, from with all others flow. The moment a man makes his own will the centre of life, divine and human relationships are destroyed, obedience to God and charity to men both become impossible. The essence of Christianity is not the enthronement but the obliteration of self.” (Barclay)
iv. “‘Lovers of self’ aptly heads the list since it is the essence of all sin and the root from which all the other characteristics spring. The word is literally ‘self-lovers’ and points to the fact that the center of gravity of the natural man is self rather than God.” (Hiebert)
b. Men will be… lovers of money: The love of money is nothing new, but today people have the ability to pursue our love of money like never before.
i. In recent years newspapers featured a story about a woman named Brenda Blackman, who enjoyed some measure of success teaching a course titled How to Marry Money. The course attempts to show men and women how to marry rich, and costs $39 per person. In the course Blackman offered helpful hints, such as how to search through your prospective mate’s checkbooks to study their deposits and then assess their income levels. She built her student’s confidence by leading them in a chant several times through the lecture: “I want to be rich! I deserve to be rich! I am rich! I was born to be rich!” In one class, Blackman was asked by a woman if it was all right to settle for a man whose income was about $100,000 a year. “No way,” she replied. What if he was perfect in every other way? “If he was in his peak earning years and he was maxed out at $100,000 – forget it,” Blackman advised. When someone asked her about the place of love in such relationships, Blackman said that finding a mate with that much money is the hard part; learning to love that person is easy by comparison. “How could you not love someone who is doing all these wonderful things for you?” she said. Blackman was single as she taught these courses.
c. Men will be… boasters, proud, blasphemers: Boasting, pride, and blasphemy are nothing new; but today, they seem far more prominent than ever.
i. Boasting, pride, and blasphemy each act as if I am the most important person. Each of them say, “You don’t matter and God does not matter. All that matters is me.”
ii. Today boasting, pride, and blasphemy are apparent everywhere, especially among the celebrities that our cultures idolizes. Many people today become wealthy by calculated boasting, pride, and blasphemy.
d. Men will be… disobedient to parents: Since the mid 1960s there has been a frightening breakdown in the authority once assumed by a child towards their parents.
i. Several years ago a judge in Orlando Florida ruled that an 11-year-old boy had the right to seek a “divorce” from his parents so that he could be adopted by a foster family. But though there are few legal divorces from parents by children, it is far more common that young people simply disregard their parents.
ii. In the 1990s, a 13-year-old Los Angeles area graffiti vandal was quoted in the Los Angeles Times: “It’s like a family to belong to a crew. They watch your back, you watch theirs. You kick it everyday with them… You get friendship, love, supplies, everything.” He also says: “I’ll tag anything… Now I don’t care. Well, sort of. I wouldn’t like no one to write on my stuff. I do it to get known, to get up, regardless if people feel that I’m causing damage to property. I’d say the damage I’ve done is quite a bit. During the day I carry a screwdriver or a knife for protection. But at night I carry a gun. I have three guns. I hide them. My mom took a .38 from me. I’m getting it back.” When asked about once when he got caught, he said: “My parents sort of talked to me about it. Of course they told me, ‘Don’t do it again.’ But I’m not gonna listen, and they don’t have to know about it.”
e. Men will be… unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving: Ever since Adam, humankind has been marked by these things to one degree or another. Here, Paul said these things will be especially prevalent in the last days.
i. Unloving (translated without natural affection in the KJV) literally means, “without family love.” Paul said that the end times would be marked by an attitude of growing disregard of normal family love and obligation.
f. Men will be… slanderers: Men have always told hurtful lies about other men; but today, in media and in politics, slander has been elevated to both big business and big money.
i. In politics, candidates routinely and knowingly distort their opponent’s positions, just to make their competition look bad – and they don’t feel bad at all about the lying if it helps them get elected. In media, editors and news directors serve as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to innocents who are wrongly suspected – and usually refuse to apologize when they are proven to be wrong.
g. Men will be… without self control: The story of no self-control can be written across almost everything today – sex, drugs, alcohol, food, work. Whatever we do, we often do it out of control.
i. In the 1990s the Los Angeles Times published an article about Michelle, who was a successful writer and editor. She feared the day her husband might discover her secret stash of credit cards, her secret post office box or the other tricks she used to hide how much money she spent shopping for herself. “I make as much money as my husband… If I want a $500 suit from Ann Taylor, I deserve it and don’t want to be hassled about it. So the easiest thing to do is lie,” she explained. Last year, when her husband forced her to destroy one of her credit cards, Michelle went out and got a new one without telling him. “I do live in fear. If he discovers this new VISA, he’ll kill me.” A school teacher explained more: “Men just don’t understand that shopping is our drug of choice,” she joked, even while admitting that some months her salary goes exclusively to paying the minimum balance on her credit cards. “Walking through the door of South Coast Plaza is like walking though the gates of heaven. God made car trunks for women to hide shopping bags in.” A young professional named Mary explained: “Shopping is my recreation. It’s my way of pampering myself. When you walk into [a mall] and you see all the stores, it’s like something takes over and you get caught up in it.”
h. Men will be… brutal: Cruelty and brutality are nothing new in the world; but Paul wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the last days would be marked by a particular brutality.
i. A newspaper article in the 1990s described how an Oxnard man was accused of murdering his roommate after the two disagreed over the brand of beer the man had brought home. The accused man brought home Natural Light, and the murdered man wanted him to bring home Michelob. As he poured the Natural Light down the kitchen sink, he was stabbed to death.
ii. We like to think of ourselves as more advanced than previous generations; but surely more people have been murdered in our century than ever before; these are violent, brutal times.
i. Men will be… despisers of good: There just seem to be too many examples of this in modern society to pick out examples. For one example, there was a time when most people thought letting people live was good and killing them was generally a bad thing. Today, we live in a culture when the simple good of life is now despised and attacked, through abortion, through the glorifying of violence and murder, and through euthanasia.
i. On March 6, 1996, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared the United States Constitution gives every American the right to kill someone else. Essentially, the court said that if you think someone might want to die – even if they have never said so – you can kill them and no law can stop you. You can kill someone if you are a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, a family member, or a “significant other” to a person you think wants to die. From the Judge’s ruling: “When patients are no longer able to pursue liberty or happiness and do not wish to pursue life,” they can be killed. The Federal Judge directly tied his decision to the right to abortion on demand. The reasoning seems to be that if the state must allow us to kill humans in the womb, it must also allow them to kill them later.
j. Men will be… traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God: These characteristics are all about one thing: Self. Men are traitors because of self, they are headstrong because of self, they are haughty because of self, and they are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God because of self.
k. Having a form of godliness but denying its power: In our self-obsessed world, people feel very free to have a “salad bar” religion – they pick and choose what they want. They feel free to be very “spiritual,” but sense no obligation to be Biblical.
i. In the late 1990s it was reported that the Reverend John Canning delivered the eulogy after Leo and Hazel Gleese were slain, telling mourners that he had been so close to the couple that he could call them Mom and Dad. On Friday, six weeks later, Canning was led off to jail in handcuffs, charged with beating and strangling the 90-year-old couple. Police say the Gleeses were killed in their home January 2 after they discovered Canning had abused the power of attorney they gave him and was stealing their savings. “It’s the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Phil Ramer, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent. “Of all people in the world you should be able to trust, it’s your pastor. They couldn’t do it in this case, and he wound up killing them.” The pastor was a suspect from the start because he waited a day to report he found the couple dead in their home. “When it takes somebody a day to report two dead bodies, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to say who the suspect is,” Ramer said. The minister passed the time before reporting the deaths by spending a day at the beach and dining out with friends.
ii. A 63-year-old married woman wrote to Dear Abby to justify her adultery. She writes: “He’s also married. We meet once a week at a motel for three hours of heaven. My husband knows nothing about this, and neither does my lover’s wife. Sex with my husband is even better now, and it’s not as though I am denying my husband anything. I teach a class at church every week, but for some reason, I feel no guilt.”
iii. When we talk about the power of godliness, we often mean it in the sense of “power to give me what I want.” But this is exactly opposite of what Paul meant here. The power of godliness that men will despise in the last days is the power it should have to guide their lives; power in the sense of rightful authority – and many, many, today deny that God has the power to tell them what to do through His Word.
There’s a lot to unpack in this commentary. Since this devotional is already approaching the length of a short novel, I’ll leave it to the reader to read through those examples again.
My next devotional examines Isaiah 5:21 - Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Thank You for pointing me to scripture that shows how humans have not changed at all since the Creation. I pray for those who call good evil and evil good and want to reside in darkness and bitterness. Amen.
Citations and Credits:
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.Lockman.org.
Precept Austin was accessed on 08/31/2026 to review commentary for Isaiah 5:20.
Commentary from Enduring Word is used with written permission and without any alteration. ©1996-present The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik – enduringword.com. At the link referenced, the bibliography used by David Guzik can be accessed. This includes the commentary from 2 Timothy.