5. Isaiah Chapter Five

Isaiah Chapter 5

Isaiah is now led to adopt a new mode of appeal to Israel. He is in the closest fellowship with Jehovah, Who gives him a song to record concerning His vineyard. It is "a song of My Beloved" (not addressed to Him). The vineyard belongs to Jehovah, and there is an intimation that His Well Beloved is Christ. The vineyard is "the house of Israel," and the vine is "the men of Judah, His pleasant plant (lit. the plant of His pleasures)." God had done everything for His people that they might be blessed in glorifying His Name and fulfilling His will. He had fenced His vineyard (Isaiah 5:2). He had given Israel His Law, separating them from all other nations. He had gathered out the stones, dealing with the Canaanites, who rendered the land barren. He had planted "the choicest vine" (the word is found elsewhere only in Genesis 49:11 and Jeremiah 2:21, rendered "noble"). He had built a tower, the central city of Jerusalem, where He would place His Name (cp. Proverbs 18:10), a tower from which His appointed priests and prophets could watch against spiritual foes. He had hewed out a wine vat to receive the juice of the grapes, symbolic of the temple, where the offerings, worship and praise would be rendered to Him by the operation of His Holy Spirit. For all this fruit the Lord "looked," waiting patiently for the prosperous outcome of His dealings. There appeared instead the small bitter berries of the wild vine (Isaiah 5:2).

Let the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah judge the matter, taking the circumstances into careful consideration. Let them have regard to what Jehovah had wrought for them, and what they had done in their rebellion against Him and the dishonor done to His Name (Isaiah 5:3-4). Divine retribution was impending and inevitable. The hedge must be removed and eaten up (devoted to grazing). The fence must be broken down and be trodden upon by the Gentiles (Isaiah 5:5). The whole must be laid waste. Pruning and hoeing would be futile. Rainless clouds would produce barrenness. What might have been so fruitful must yield briers and thorns, the very emblems of stunted growth. The Lord’s doctrine "drops as the rain" and His speech "distill as the dew"; but where there is no heart to receive it, how can there be anything but unproductiveness and blights? (Isaiah 5:6).

Isaiah 5:7 also interprets the metaphor of the wild grapes. God "looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry." It has been pointed out that the fact that the Hebrew pair of contrasting words have a certain similarity of sound, gives an intimation that as the wild grapes have a certain resemblance to the good, so in mere outward appearance the evildoers seemed religious, while actually they were full of iniquity (cp. Matthew 23:28). The lesson from this passage is clear. It is possible to become so familiar with the routine of religious exercises that, while outwardly conformed to what has been learnt from Scripture, real heart devotion to Christ Himself has waned; the first love has been lost, and with it true spiritual power. The declension may open the way for grosser forms of evil, and the Lord has to stand at the door and knock, waiting for a response from any who really desire to enjoy communion with Him, and real conformity to His will and way. This parable of the vineyard is followed by six denunciatory woes. In much the same way the Lord in dealing with the leaders of the people followed His parable of the vineyard, in Matthew 21:33-41, by a sevenfold series of "woes" in Matthew 23:13-36. The first "woe" uttered by Isaiah, is against covetousness and greed (Isaiah 5:8). There were those who added house to house and field to field, aiming at monopolies, and violating the law of property laid down in Numbers 36:7. Desolation and scarcity must follow (Isaiah 5:9-10). The land was the Lord’s, not theirs.

Failure to realize that all that we are and have belong to Christ leads to such misuse of what has been entrusted to us, that we seek to serve our own ends thereby and bring the disaster upon ourselves of spiritual barrenness and want. The second woe is against self-indulgence and pleasure seeking (Isaiah 5:11-12; with Isaiah 5:12 cp. Amos 6:4-5). They heeded not the work of the Lord and were blind to the operation of His hands. Hence captivity without knowledge. The phrase rendered "for lack of knowledge" (Isaiah 5:13, r.v.) may mean "without knowing it," i.e., without discerning the reason for, and the meaning of, the Lord’s dealings. As a result their glory (the high and mighty in the nation) would become "men of starvation," and the multitude (the riotous mass of the people) would be men parched with thirst.

Self-indulgence dulls the spiritual sense by which we understand the ways of the Lord. But a further consequence would ensue. Death follows famine. The foe would be cruel. Sheol (the underworld) would open wide its jaws, and the glory (the men of note) and their multitude (the people in general), with all the pomp and godless rejoicing, would descend into it. The mean man would be brought down and the mighty humbled (the order is chiasmic, or inverse, in contrast to that in Isaiah 5:14). The eyes of the lofty, open to anything but the Lord, would be humbled (Isaiah 5:15; cp. Isaiah 2:9, Isaiah 2:11, Isaiah 2:17). When men are persistently blind to God’s dealings in grace and longsuffering, He manifests Himself in righteous retributive judgment. So it was with Israel and its captivity. So it will be with the world at the end of this age. Jehovah of Hosts will be (lit., will show Himself) "exalted in judgment," and God the Holy One will be "sanctified [lit., will sanctify Himself] in righteousness" (Isaiah 5:16). He will compel recognition of His attributes and claims. Jew and Gentile alike will be made to give Him the glory which is His alone (cp. Php 2:9-11). And as to the land that remained after the nation had gone into captivity, it would be occupied by foreign nomad shepherds; lambs would feed "as in their pasture" (Isaiah 5:17, r.v.). and the places left waste by the removal of the nation, would be eaten by strangers. For centuries Arabs have literally fulfilled this, and Jerusalem has been given up to Islam. The third woe (Isaiah 5:18-19) is against daring presumption and defiance against God. They "draw iniquity with cords of vanity [not pride, but lying and seductive teaching], and sin as it were with a cart rope." The figure is that of beasts of burden roped to a wagon. Iniquity was the burden they dragged by their vain delusions, and sin the wagon to which they were roped. However presumptuously they might glory in their ungodliness, it would bring the inevitable punishment. The description is sarcastic. Vaunting themselves in their evil in word and deed they failed all the time to apprehend the retribution it was bringing upon them.

They scoffed at God’s Word and derided His Name. "They say, Let Him make speed, and hasten His work, that we may see it [i.e., let Him fulfill what He has foretold, let us see whether He can actually carry it out]; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it (i.e., experience its fulfillment)!" This way of taking God’s Name in vain was a gibe at Isaiah’s use of it (Isaiah 1:4; Isaiah 5:24; Isaiah 30:10-11). Such taunts were the very height of defiance. They would be repeated at the Cross, and will be repeated by the Antichrist (see also 2 Peter 3:3-4). The fourth woe (Isaiah 5:20) denounces those who subvert moral principles. They "call evil good, and good evil." They put "darkness for light, and light for darkness"; "bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." Evil loves darkness and delights in sin, the bitter thing. To forsake the Lord is evil (Jeremiah 2:19); they pronounce it good. It is good to draw nigh to God (Psalms 73:28); they declare it to be evil. Thus they flagrantly contradicted the very precepts and revealed will of the Lord. The fifth woe (Isaiah 5:21) denounces the pride and self-complacency of those who are "wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight" (in contradiction to Proverbs 3:7). This condition is closely connected with those mentioned under the two preceding woes. It is the natural concomitant of the rejection of God’s Word and the subversion of morals. The sixth woe (Isaiah 5:22-23) denounces those who pervert justice and use their administrative powers to enrich themselves by bribes and to indulge in drunken debauchery. The prophet is again sarcastic. They are "mighty," i.e., men of renown, in their twofold criminality. The divine judgment upon all this is likened to a fire (lit., a tongue of fire, a phrase here only in the O.T.) devouring stubble, a flame consuming chaff (or rather, dry grass sinking down in flame). All that they gloried in would be as moldy rottenness and vanishing dust (Isaiah 5:24). They despised Jehovah’s law and scornfully rejected "the word [the speech, as in Deuteronomy 32:2] of the Holy One of Israel." Hence the righteous and irrevocable anger of the Lord and the stretching forth of His hand in wrath. The hills would tremble by the marching of hostile armies, and the carcasses of the people would be like street sweepings (Isaiah 5:25).

What is foretold in Isaiah 5:26-30 came to pass in the invasions of Nebuchadnezzar, the first of which took place in 589 b.c. God is described as lifting up "an ensign to the nations from far," i.e., planting a banner to summon them to Jerusalem as His military rendezvous, to fight His battles against His apostate people. How great the change from the time when He Himself was their banner (Jehovah-nissi) against their first foe after the overthrow of Pharaoh and his hosts (Exodus 17:15)! Secondly, that He would "hiss unto them [the Chaldeans] from the end of the earth" presents the figure of a bee-keeper enticing the bees, by hissing, to leave their hives and settle on the ground. The foe would roar over it (Isaiah 5:30), i.e., over Judah and Jerusalem, and God’s nation would look to the earth and see only darkness and tribulation, and in the heavens the darkness of night instead of light. The general description given in these verses points not only to the Chaldean invasions but to those by subsequent powers, reaching a climax in the Roman conquest and eventual destruction of the city and the scattering of the people. This fifth chapter thus has three parts: (1) Jehovah’s planting and care of His vineyard, and His disappointment in its failure (Isaiah 5:1-7), (2) the actual transgressions of both rulers and people, denounced under the six woes (Isaiah 5:8-23), (3) the judgments which would fall upon them (Isaiah 5:26-30).

All has its warnings against departure from the Word of God, and against the adoption of evil practices, the inevitable result of such departure. So it has been in the history of Christendom. All must meet with divine retribution at the hands of the nations. For this see Revelation 17:16-18.

God in His grace has left nothing undone to enable us to be fruitful for His glory, by His Spirit and His Word. Once we turn from this we not only become unfruitful but open our hearts to many forms of evil, and "judgment must begin at the House of God."