FOREWORD by John David
Isaiah accurately describes sieges and raids on Jerusalem by foreign powers. Both Jesus and Isaiah used the vineyard in allegorical form. Isaiah enumerates consequences of Jerusalem’s continued rebellion: “Of a truth many houses shall be desolate.” The imminent wrath of God against idolatrous Judah remembers mercy in the hope of its repentance and return. Because of his promise to David the remnant will never be forgotten. Of his promise to Solomon Jerusalem will enjoy the same preservation over time, despite destruction.
Isaiah says: “my people are gone into captivity,” speaking of past and future abductions. The Samaritan king of Israel takes 200,000 away to the north on one occasion. God always uses foreign people and powers to discipline the righteous land become godless. This is so, either for God’s people (the Jews) or for Christian nations of the West become apostate. “The Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment”.
The reason is adequately expressed: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil,”… “Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people; “…“their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord”. Thus God will make an example of Jerusalem, gone stray,: “An ensign to the nations from far.” God reluctantly chastens his children but it is always tinged with loving-kindness. Examples are Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, and King David, brought to repentance and restored (Psalm 51). Nevertheless, the agony of both divine and human grief from His judgment is aptly described by Isaiah: “If one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened.”
Foreword by John David.
KJV Bible (Public domain: biblegateway.com) Isaiah 5:1-30 below.
Isaiah 5
Isaiah lists Jerusalem’s resistance to God’s entreaties. .
1 Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:
2 And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.
3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.
4 What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?
5 And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:
6 And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.
Jerusalem’s desolation from foreign attacks & abductions.
8 Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!
9 In mine ears said the Lord of hosts; Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.
10 Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah.
11 Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!
12 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands.
13 Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.
14 Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.
15 And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled:
16 But the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.
17 Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat.
The deteriorating morals of beleaguered Jerusalem.
18 Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope:
19 That say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it!
20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!
22 Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink:
23 Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!
24 Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
25 Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
26 And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly:
27 None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken:
28 Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind:
29 Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it.
30 And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.
KJV Bible (Public domain: biblegateway.com)
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FOOTNOTES. by John David
Isaiah 5:1. The use of analogy and allegory increases throughout a mixture of verse and prose in Isaiah’s sixty six chapters, sometimes increasing the readers difficulty rather than simplifying the text. This was to confuse his enemy critics in high places.
Isaiah 5:7. ‘Judah his pleasant plant,’ is the object of Isaiah’s mission and later in the book Judah is synonymous with Jacob, and Israel.
Isaiah 5:9. This allegory of the unproductive vineyard was used also by Jesus in the New Testament, as same example of the Lord’s rejected care of Israel in the past. ‘He came unto his own and they received him not.’
Isaiah 5:13. ‘my people are gone into captivity’ speaks of thousands of Jerusalem citizens abducted by foreign invading powers, including the northern kingdom of rebel Israel’s ten tribes that seceded from Solomon’s Kingdom.
Isaiah 5:26 The historical ensign to the future is: ‘to whom much is given, much shall be required.’ Thus God’s people spurning his laws and love must suffer the loving chastisement of divine vengeance from outside nations’ aggression.
Isaiah 5:30. ‘And in that day’ gives the hint of Jerusalem and Judah’s imminent destruction under the later reign of Zedekiah, the last king, a few decades after Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh’s evil reign.
