Isaiah 5
McGeeCHAPTER 5THEME: The song of the vineyard; the six woes that followThis chapter brings us to the end of the section which was begun in chapter 2. The first seven verses are the song of the vineyard which tells of the sins of the nation Israel and the coming captivity. The balance of the chapter gives the six woes or the six specific sins which bring down the judgment of God upon the nation. The penalty for each sin is listed.
Isaiah 5:1
THE SONG OF THE VINEYARDThose who can read the song of the vineyard in Hebrew tell me that it is without doubt one of the most beautiful songs that has ever been written. There is nothing quite like it; there is nothing to rival it. It is a musical symphony, and it is absolutely impossible to reproduce in English. It is truly a song and comparable to any of the psalms. The vineyard is the house of Israel (v. Isa_5:7). Thus, the vineyard becomes one of the two figures in Scripture that are taken from the botanical world to represent the whole nation of Israel. The fig tree is the other figure that is used. Before His death our Lord gave a parable of the vineyard which obviously referred to the whole house of Israel (see Mat_21:33-46). In Isaiah the prophet announces the imminent captivity of the northern kingdom into Assyria and of the southern kingdom into Babylon. In Matthew the Lord Jesus Christ showed that God had given Israel a second chance in their return from the seventy-year Babylonian captivity, but the nation’s rejection of the Son of God would usher in a more extensive and serious dispersion. Now listen to the song of the vineyard: “My beloved” is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world. “A very fruitful hill"there is nothing wrong with the soil. The problem is with the vineyard itself; that is, with the vine. Verse Isa_5:7 makes it quite clear that the vineyard is the house of Israel; it is Judah. It is not the church or something else. This is clear; we do not have to guess at these things. God is again inviting us into court to consider His charges against Israel. And, my friend, the minute you listen to Him and to His charge against Israel, you will find yourself condemned.
Isaiah 5:2
God took the nation Israel out of Egypt and placed them in the Promised Land. He expected them to produce the fruits of righteousness and required them to glorify His name. They failed ignominiously.
Isaiah 5:3
God asks these people to judge, to equate the difference between God and Israel. Very candidly, friend, when you look at your own life are you ready to complain against God? I know how I whined and howled when I got cancer. I thought the Lord was being unfair. Then I had the opportunity of lying alone on that hospital bed and looking at my life. My friend, God wasn’t wrongI was wrong and I needed to face up to it. We need to get rid of the idea that somehow we are something special. God is not going to do anything to us that is unjust. He is not going to do anything that is wrong. You and I are wrong; God isn’t wrong.
Isaiah 5:4
God states that He made every provision on His part for them to produce the fruits of righteousness. Their failure under these circumstances becomes serious indeed.
Isaiah 5:5
This is a clear prediction of the forthcoming captivities of both the kingdoms. For over five hundred years God had kept the great nations of the world off the land bridge of three continentsPalestine. He put a wall around the children of Israel. God would not let anybody touch them, though many times He could have judged them. But God says, “You are My vineyard. I have hedged you in, but now I am breaking down the wall.” First Syria, then Assyria, then Babylonthey all poured into Israel’s land and laid it waste. And in spite of everything that has been done in that land today, it is still a pretty desolate looking place. God has judged it. “I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” For over a thousand years, the former (fall) and the latter (spring) rains did not fall. That is why that land is so desolate today. The former rains, I understand, have begun, but not the latter.
Isaiah 5:7
You don’t have to guess whom the prophet is talking about. The vineyard refers to the whole house of Israel, and this verse makes that crystal clear. And in that vineyard God “looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.”
Isaiah 5:8
THE SIX WOESOnce again God is going to spell it all out. Six woes are mentioned here, and each one tells of a certain sin for which God is judging Israel. If you want to apply these to your life or to the life of our nation, you can do it. But the interpretation is for Israel; it has already been fulfilled for them. We can certainly make application to our own hearts and lives, however. This is the first sin of Israel. What is it? This sin is the lust of the eye; more specifically, it is covetousness. Col_3:5 tells us: “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Covetousness is idolatry. It is a big business expanding at the expense of the little man. That is what happened in Israelthe little man was squeezed out. It was done so that great fortunes might be accumulated. The only excuse for such expansion is the insatiable greed for more property and possessions. God will judge the people for that. It is a sad story that we have here. The picture is one of a great complex of farms. In Isaiah’s day the people were agricultural people. They built big corporations, big complexes. This was not done for the good of the little man, the small operator. It was done to accumulate wealth. Anything to which you give yourself completely becomes your religion. Many people today are worshiping at the altar of covetousness. Covetousness is a mean-looking god. It has the face of a silver dollar or a dollar bill. It is one thing that brought down Israel and for which God judged them. Instead of following God’s instructions, they were beginning to take all of the richness from the soil. We are doing the same thing today. We are living in a world which is actually depleted of its energy. We are frantically searching for oil, for any kind of energy that can be used. Why? Because men are covetous, and that covetousness is depleting the earth of its riches. That is a judgment of God.
Isaiah 5:9
God is simply saying that even though they expand their lands, the yield will not be great because there will be a famine which will decimate the crop. Extended holdings will not produce a bumper crop at all. The earth you and I are living on is running short of energy. We are running out of oil. We are running out of arable lands. This subject of ecology is an important matter. Pollution is destroying much of the earth. One of these days we are going to be on a desolate planet. We are quickly running out of energy. If you are planning on taking a trip, you had better go now, because there is going to be a shortage of fuel. It may not happen in our lifetime, but there are those who believe that it will be in our lifetime. This is the judgment that God made on the nation Israel in that day.
Isaiah 5:11
This is the second woe, the second sin. Drunkenness and pleasure on a national scale are the sins mentioned here, and they lead to the deadening of all spiritual perception. I notice that the news media do not release today, as they did a number of years ago, the number of alcoholics that we have in this country. The last report I got, which was several years ago, was that there were ten million alcoholics in the United States. They do put in the paper what is done with the tax money the liquor industry pays. It goes to take care of the alcoholics and to maintain police forces who take care of the accidents caused by drunk drivers! Of course, no one can pay for the lives of the innocent victims taken in such useless accidents. No one knows how many decisions are made in our government by people who have just come from a cocktail party.
These are the things that lower the morals of a nation. They destroy a nation and eat at its vitals like a cancer. Such a nation is on the verge of falling prey to an enemy without.
Isaiah 5:13
The majority of the people in this country think it is rather sophisticated to drink, that it is the thing to do. I was very much interested in an article in which the man being interviewed was the director of a therapeutic community for drug addicts in New York. One of the questions he was asked was, “Is there anything parents can do to prevent children from turning to drugs?” This man, whose answers indicated that he probably was not a Christian, said that of paramount importance is an attitude in the home of not using drugs, pills, or alcohol as a means of solving life’s problems. He went on to say that he didn’t mean that taking an occasional social drink was taboo (of course, he would not go so far as to say that!), but that the old rule, “Monkey see, monkey do,” is just as valid on this issue as it is on any other. He said that youngsters who grow up in an atmosphere of drug abuse will be among the first to try marijuana or pills when confronted with their own problems. Father, mother, if you continue to drink cocktailsand I see it in many restaurants as I travel across the countrydon’t be surprised if your Willie or Mary gets on dope. They will probably move in that direction. After all, why do you drink? The problem of young people on drugs started in the home where parents drink in order to face life. That is what destroys the home and the nation. Drunkenness is one of the things that brought down Israel. What about our nation?
Isaiah 5:14
The word translated “hell” in this verse is actually “the grave.” It is not a reference to the lake of fire as we think of hell today. It is the Hebrew word sheol. It means that “the grave demands.” You find this same word in Pro_30:16 which says, “The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough.” Death, or the grave, (both satisfactory translations of sheol) is never satisfied. This is the question to ask when you stand at the grave of someone: Where is he? Job asked this question, “But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?” (Job_14:10). That is the question everybody is going to have to ask. Hell at first did not have the idea of a locality, but in time it was thought that since God was in heaven or above, hell or the grave must be below or down. In the New Testament the word hades is the same as the Old Testament sheol. The Lord Jesus used this word when He said, “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell [hades] …” (Mat_11:23). The Lord was not talking about a literal descent into the heart of the earth. He simply meant that Capernaum was going to be brought down, and all you have to do is look at the ruins of that place today to know that what He said was true. We always attach strong moral connotations to the terms of direction, up and down: up towards God and down towards hell.
Here Isaiah is saying that the nation of Israel will be brought down. They are going to be taken into captivity, they are going to be brought down to the grave, and the glory of the nation will be turned into dust because of her drunkenness and pleasure. Rudyard Kipling was a prophet as well as a poet when he wrote in his “Recessional”: “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.”
Isaiah 5:18
This can be translated: “Woe to those whose wickedness is helped by words of lying, who in their pride and unbelief the wrath of God define.” You can make a poem out of it, you see. This is the third woe, or the third sin. This is the picture of a nation giving itself in abandon to sin without shame or conscience.
Isaiah 5:19
In other words, they challenge God to do anything about their sin. It is interesting to note that no penalty is mentioned. The very silence here is frightening: the penalty is too awful to mention. The history of the deportation of the nation to Babylon tells something of the frightful judgment of God upon a people who sin with impunity against Him and defy Him. God will judge them. Do you remember Psalms 137? In that psalm Israel prayed against Babylon. They prayed that there would be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They said, “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones” (Psa_137:9). That is horrible beyond words, but that is the judgment that came to Israel. My friend, God is a God of love, but when you reach the place where you defy Him and turn your back on Him, there is no hope for you. Judgment comes. There are just too many instances in history to deny this fact, unless you want to shut your eyes to them.
Isaiah 5:20
This is the fourth sin against which the fourth woe is leveled. It is an attempt to destroy God’s standards of right and wrong by substituting man’s values which contradict His moral standards. This is the confusion that comes upon a nation when they abandon God after He has blessed them in the past for their acknowledgment of Him. England is a present-day example of this, and America is fast deteriorating in the same direction. We have this confusion in our standards of marriage today. I listened to a very beautiful little girl tell her story on a television interview program. She was living with a man to whom she was not married, and the reason she gave was that she was being honestshe did not believe in being a hypocrite. I have news for her: she is not only a hypocrite and dishonest, she knows that what she is doing is wrong and that she should be married. God says she is living in adultery. I don’t care, my friend, what you might think about itthat’s what God says.
Isaiah 5:21
This is the fifth woe, the sin of pride. God hates this above all else. Pro_6:16-17 tells us, “These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.” Pride was the sin of Satan according to 1Ti_3:6, “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.” Pride is number one on God’s hate parade.
Isaiah 5:22
This is the sixth and last woe. Here a people have become so sodden with drunkenness that they have lost their sense of justice. Injustice and crookedness prevail, and the righteous man is falsely accused. No nation can long survive which drops so low in morals that it loses its sense of values. Ours is a day when people are saying that wrong is right and right is wrong. In my younger days I was in a little theater group, and I remember memorizing a line from The Great Divide: “Wrong is wrong from the moment it happens ’til the crack of doom, and all the angels in heaven working overtime cannot make it different or less by a hair.” My friend, wrong is still wrong.
Isaiah 5:24
“As the fire devoureth the stubble.” Though the process of deterioration and rottenness is slow and unobserved, the penalty comes like a fire in the stubble. It is fast and furious and cannot be deterred. It is the anger of the Lord bursting forth in judgment. It moves the frightful judgment of God in the last days. In Mat_12:20 the Lord Jesus Christ said, “A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory.” He was quoting from Isa_42:3. There are certain sins that bring their own judgment; drunkenness is one, and drug abuse is another. I could give many instances of men I have seen engaged in these sins, and the sin worked in their own lives, in the lives of their families, and in their bodies until it destroyed them. God didn’t have to do a thing. The smoking flax will break into flame, and that bruised reed will die. The very sin that we commit is the sin that will destroy us. When I was a young man in Nashville, Tennessee, I went to a dentist who was also a good friend. One day he told me something which had happened in that town several years before. He told me that one of the most reputable doctors in the city had headed up a dope ring. It was difficult for the law to reach him because of his position. One day the doctor tightened up on the dope in order to get a higher price. For a brief period of time he cut off the supply of dope.
This, of course, pushed the price up higher. During that time both his son and daughter were exposed as addicts. He knew nothing about their problem until he cut off the dope supply. That man had the shock of his life, and it apparently led to his death, which occurred shortly afterward. God doesn’t have to put His hand in and judge every time. In many instances He just lets sin take its course. The sin of drinking is all around us today. God doesn’t do anything about it. He doesn’t have to. Drunkenness will bring its own judgment. Judgment will come to the individual, and it will come to the nation. Those of us who have been in the ministry for a long time have seen drinking increase through the years, and I have seen some heavy drinkers be converted and turn to the Lord.
But some of them would leave a bottle in the icebox, just in case. That is what leads many back into the awful sin of drinking. That is what Paul is talking about in Rom_8:12 when he says, “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.” In other words, make no arrangements with the flesh to do what it wants to do. Don’t leave a bottle in the refrigerator. Take the bottle out and break it. Many of us kid ourselves about our sins, but some of these sins touch all of us, I am sure.
Isaiah 5:25
“Therefore is the anger of the LORD kindled against his people.” This is a strange verse for many who want to talk about just the love of God. The love of God is real, and you cannot keep Him from loving you; but God hates sin, my friend. If you are going to love sin, still He will love you, but you can expect His judgment. The anger of the Lord is kindled against His peoplenot against the neighbors. “But his hand is stretched out still.” If Israel had gone to the Lord and trusted Him, He would have delivered them. The judgment of God is in the Book of Isaiah but so is His grace. The government of God and the grace of Godthey are not in conflict. If you are going to continue in sin, if you refuse the grace of God, then you will know what the government of God is. In the rest of this chapter we see an accumulation of the judgment of God.
Isaiah 5:30
Take a good look at the land of Israel today. Many people who have traveled to Israel come back and say, “It certainly is wonderful. We are seeing the fulfillment of prophecy. The land is being reclaimed.” They go on and on about how prophecy is being fulfilled. I don’t see it that way at all. I see a people still in darkness. I see a people far from God. I see a people who are not living in peace and who need God. They are living in fear and are in great danger in that land today. My heart goes out to them. This is the judgment of God. Consider the following poem: OUR PRAYERLESS SIN We have not wept for thy grief, Israel, scattered, driven, Shut up to darkened unbelief While we have heaven. We have not prayed for thy peace, Jerusalem forsaken; Thy root’s increase, by God’s great grace, We age-long have partaken. How trod thy street our Saviour’s feet; How fell His tears for thee; How, loving Him, can we forget, Nor long thy joys to see. Zion, thy God remembers thee Though we so hard have been; Zion, thy God remembers thee, With blood-bought right to cleanse, may He Remove our prayerless sin. Selected and revised God is punishing His own people.