Therefore now hear this, you afflicted one, drunken, but not with wine.
God, having awoke for the comfort of his people, here calls upon them to awake, as afterwards, Isa 52:1. It is a call to awake not so much out of the sleep of sin (though that also is necessary in order to their being ready for deliverance) as out of the stupor of despair.
Commenting on Isaiah 51:17-23
Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted,.... By Babylon, by antichrist and his followers; hear, for thy comfort, the following prophecy: and drunken, but not with wine; not with wine in a literal sense; nor with the wine of the fornication of the whore of Rome; nor with idolatry, as the kings of the earth are said to be, Rev 17:2 but, as the Targum expresses...
drunken . . . not with wine-- (Isa 29:9; compare Isa 51:17, Isa 51:20, here; Lam 3:15).