Let me sing for my well beloved a song of my beloved about his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.
He dug it up, gathered out its stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the middle of it, and also cut out a wine press in it. He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
“Now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard.
What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Why, when I looked for it to yield grapes, did it yield wild grapes?
Now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be eaten up. I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down.
I will lay it a wasteland. It won’t be pruned or hoed, but it will grow briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5 The Prophet by this song doth set before the…
The Prophet by this song doth set before the people’s eyes their ingratitude, and God’s mercy.
That is, to God.
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Meaning, that he had planted his Church in a place most plentiful and abundant.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–6 Isa 5:1 Now will I sing to my wellbeloved…
Isa 5:1 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:
Ver. 1. Now will I sing.] Now, or, Now I pray, as stirring up his hearers to attention; for here beginneth his third sermon. He had endeavoured, but with little good effect, to convince them of their detestable unthankfulness, apostasy, and other enormities, in prose. Now he resolves to try another course, and to be unto them as a poet rather than a prophet, if haply they might be taken by the sweetness of his verse, and loveliness of his voice. {Eze 33:32}
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“ Metra parant animos, comprendunt plurima paucis:
Aures delectant, pristina commemorant. ”
True it is that poets, for the most part, are dulcissime vani, most sweetly vain, as Augustine said of Homer. And some have noted well concerning St Paul, that citing his countryman, Aratus (for he was a Cilician), he nameth him not, but only saith, "Certain of your own poets," {Act 17:28} notwithstanding the piety of his beginning, ‘Eκ Dιος αρχωμεθα, or the divineness of his subject, the heavens - more sublime and pure matter than useth to be in the wanton pages of other poets. But our divine poet is of another alloy, and his holy song is of the same strain with that of Moses, of Deborah and Barak, of Hannah, of David, - qui noster Orpheus est, saith Euthymius, the "sweet singer of Israel," {2Sa 23:1} - of Solomon with his Song of Songs; saving that this is lugubre carmen, saith Oecolampadius, et tragediae quam comediae similius, a lamentable ditty, and more like a tragedy than a comedy; for, though the prophet beginneth merrily, yet he endeth heavily; it is of "mercy and judgment" that he singeth.
To my well beloved,] i.e., To Christ, the Church’s bridegroom, cuius amicus et administer sum, whose paranymph {advocate} I am and well wisher; {Joh 3:29 2Co 11:2-3} some render it for my beloved, or in his defence.
A song.] Or, Poem, whereto this first verse is the proem or preface. A spiritual song it is, most artificially composed, and set out with the most exquisite skill that might be.
Of my beloved.] Of him whom my soul loveth; {as Son 1:7} Jonathan loved David (1.) With a love of union; {1Sa 18:1} (2.) With a love of complacence; {Isa 5:19} (3.) With a love of benevolence. {Isa 20:4} So doth a gracious heart love Jesus Christ. My Love was crucified, said Ignatius, {a} whose heart was even a lump of love.
Touching his vineyard.] That degenerate plant of a strange vine unto him, {Jer 2:21} the plantation and supplantation whereof is here, first, Parabolically propounded; secondly, More plainly expounded. Some read it, "to his vineyard"; others, "for his vineyard." See Mat 21:33-34 Mar 12:1-2 Luk 20:9; Luk 20:16.
My beloved.] See how oft he harps upon this sweet string, and cannot come off. What a man loveth he will be talking of, as the huntsman of his hounds, the drunkard of his cups, the worldling of his wealth, &c. Ten times in eight verses together doth St Paul mention the name of Jesus, {1Co 1:1-4; 1Co 1:7-10} showing thereby that it was to him mel in ore, melos in aure, iubilum in corde, the sweetest music.
Hath a vineyard.] So the Church is here {Isa 5:7} and elsewhere frequently and fitly styled: Confert autem vineae, saith Oecolampadius. To a vineyard is the Church compared for sundry reasons; as the great care men take about it, {b} the great delight they take in it, the sweet fruits they expect from it, the great worth of its fruit, the little worth of its stem {Eze 15:3} if it prove fruitless, the lowly and feeble condition thereof, the continual need it hath to be dressed, supported, sheltered, pruned. αιρει, καθαιρει, {Joh 15:2} amputat, putat.
In a very fruitful hill.] Heb., In a horn the son of oil, that is, a horny hill, bowing like a halfmoon, and so exposed to the sunbeams all the day long. {c} Some say that Judea lieth in the form of a horn, like as the low countries do in the form of a lion, unde Leo Belgicus. The "son of oil," or "fatness," that is, exceeding fat; Judea is called Sumen totius orbis, the friutful mother of all the earth, a land "flowing with milk and honey," {Eze 20:6} a very cornucopia of all comforts. Basil telleth us that it was a tradition of great antiquity, that Adam, when he was thrust out of paradise, ut dolorem leniret, for a mitigation of his grief, chose Judea, that most fruitful country, for a place to dwell in; whence it is that Sodom and her sisters, which were a part of that country, are said to be "pleasant as the garden of God." {Gen 13:10}
{a} Rom. xii.
{b} Nulla possessio maiorem operam requirit. - Cato. Itali dicunt, Vinea est tinea.
{c} Soli antemeridiano, meridiano atque postmeridiano expositus. - Pisc.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–6 Now will I sing; I will record it, to…
Now will I sing; I will record it, to be a witness for God, and against you, as Moses did his song, Deu 31:19; 32:1.
To my Well-beloved; to the Lord of the vineyard, as appears by the last clause of the verse; to God or Christ, whom I love and serve, and for whose glory, eclipsed by you, I am greatly concerned.
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A song of my Beloved; not devised by me, not the effect of my envy or passion; but inspired by God, which therefore it behoveth you to lay to heart.
His vineyard; his church, oft and very fitly called a vineyard, because of God’s singular respect to it, and care of it, and his delight in it, and expectation of good fruit from it, &c.
In a very fruitful hill; hills being places most commodious for vines: see Psa 80:10. Heb. in a horn (which may signify either,
1. The figure or shape of the land of Canaan, which resembles a horn; or,
2. The height and hilliness of that land, as horns are the highest parts of beasts; or,
3. The goodliness and excellency of it, as a horn, when it is ascribed to a man, signifies his glory and dignity, as Job 16:1,5; Psa 89:17,24, &c.) the son of oil, which, by a vulgar Hebraism, notes an oily or a fat soil.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 See what variety of methods the great God takes…
See what variety of methods the great God takes to awaken sinners to repentance by convincing them of sin, and showing them their misery and danger by reason of it. To this purport he speaks sometimes in plain terms and sometimes in parables, sometimes in prose and sometimes in verse, as here. "We have tried to reason with you (Isa 1:18); now let us put your case into a poem, inscribed to the honour of my well beloved." God the Father dictates it to the honour of Christ his well beloved Son, whom he has constituted Lord of the vineyard. The prophet sings it to the honour of Christ too, for he is his well beloved. The Old Testament prophets were friends of the bridegroom. Christ is God's beloved Son and our beloved Saviour. Whatever is said or sung of the church must be intended to his praise, even that which (like this) tends to our shame. This parable was put into a song that it might be the more moving and affecting, might be the more easily learned and exactly remembered, and the better transmitted to posterity; and it is an exposition of he song of Moses (Deu. 32), showing that what he then foretold was now fulfilled. Jerome says, Christ the well-beloved did in effect sing this mournful song when he beheld Jerusalem and wept over it (Luk 19:41), and had reference to it in the parable of the vineyard (Mat 21:33, etc.), only here the fault was in the vines, there in the husbandmen. Here we have,
I. The great things which God had done for the Jewish church and nation. When all the rest of the world lay in common, not cultivated by divine revelation, that was his vineyard, they were his peculiar people. He acknowledged them as his own, set them apart for himself. The soil they were planted in was extraordinary; it was a very fruitful hill, the horn of the son of oil; so it is in the margin. There was plenty, a cornucopia; and there was dainty: they did there eat the fat and drink the sweet, and so were furnished with abundance of good things to honour God with in sacrifices and free-will offerings. The advantages of our situation will be brought into the account another day. Observe further what God did for this vineyard. 1. He fenced it, took it under his special protection, kept it night and day under his own eye, lest any should hurt it, Isa 27:2, Isa 27:3. If they had not themselves thrown down their fence, no inroad could have been made upon them, Psa 125:2; Psa 131:1-3 :4. 2. He gathered the stones out of it, that, as nothing from without might damage it, so nothing within might obstruct its fruitfulness. He proffered his grace to take away the stony heart. 3. He planted it with the choicest vine, set up a pure religion among them, gave them a most excellent law, instituted ordinances very proper for the keeping up of their acquaintance with God, Jer 2:21. 4. He built a tower in the midst of it, either for defence against violence or for the dressers of the vineyard to lodge in; or rather it was for the owner of the vineyard to sit in, to take a view of the vines (Sol 7:12) - a summer-house. The temple was this tower, about which the priests lodged, and where God promised to meet his people, and gave them the tokens of his presence among them and pleasure in them. 5. He made a wine-press therein, set up his altar, to which the sacrifices, as the fruits of the vineyard, should be brought.
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II. The disappointment of his just expectations from them: He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and a great deal of reason he had for that expectation. Note, God expects vineyard-fruit from those that enjoy vineyard-privileges, not leaves only, as Mar 11:12. A bare profession, though ever so green, will not serve: there must be more than buds and blossoms. Good purposes and good beginnings are good things, but not enough; there must be fruit, a good heart and a good life, vineyard fruit, thoughts and affections, words and actions, agreeable to the Spirit, which is the fatness of the vineyard (Gal 5:22, Gal 5:23), answerable to the ordinances, which are the dressings of the vineyard, acceptable to God, the Lord of the vineyard, and fruit according to the season. Such fruit as this God expects from us, grapes, the fruit of the vine, with which they honour God and man (Jdg 9:13); and his expectations are neither high nor hard, but righteous and very reasonable. Yet see how his expectations are frustrated: It brought forth wild grapes; not only no fruit at all, but bad fruit, worse than none, grapes of Sodom, Deu 32:32. 1. Wild grapes are the fruits of the corrupt nature, fruit according to the crabstock, not according to the engrafted branch, from the root of bitterness, Heb 12:15. Where grace does not work corruption will. 2. Wild grapes are hypocritical performances in religion, that look like grapes, but are sour or bitter, and are so far from being pleasing to God that they are provoking, as theirs mentioned in Isa 1:11. Counterfeit graces are wild grapes.
III. An appeal to themselves whether upon the whole matter God must not be justified and they condemned, Isa 5:3, Isa 5:4. And now the case is plainly stated: O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah! judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. This implies that God was blamed about them. There was a controversy between them and him; but the equity was so plain on his side that he could venture to put the decision of the controversy to their own consciences. "Let any inhabitant of Jerusalem, any man of Judah, that has but the use of his reason and a common sense of equity and justice, speak his mind impartially in this matter." Here is a challenge to any man to show, 1. Any instance wherein God had been wanting to them: What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? He speaks of the external means of fruitfulness, and such as might be expected from the dresser of a vineyard, from whom it is not required that he should change the nature of the vine. What ought to have been done more? so it may be read. They had everything requisite for instruction and direction in their duty, for quickening them to it and putting them in mind of it. No inducements were wanting to persuade them to it, but all arguments were used that were proper to work either upon hope or fear; and they had all the opportunities they could desire for the performance of their duty, the new moons, and the sabbaths, and solemn feasts; They had the scriptures, the lively oracles, a standing ministry in the priests and Levites, besides what was extraordinary in the prophets. No nation had statutes and judgments so righteous. 2. Nor could any tolerable excuse be offered for their walking thus contrary to God. "Wherefore, what reason can be given why it should bring forth wild grapes, when I looked for grapes?" Note, The wickedness of those that profess religion, and enjoy the means of grace, is the most unreasonable unaccountable thing in the world, and the whole blame of it must lie upon the sinners themselves. "If thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it, and shalt not have a word to say for thyself in the judgment of the great day." God will prove his own ways equal and the sinner's ways unequal.
IV. Their doom read, and a righteous sentence passed upon them for their bad conduct towards God (Isa 5:5, Isa 5:6): "And now go to, since nothing can be offered in excuse of the crime or arrest of the judgement, I will tell you what I am now determined to do to my vineyard. I will be vexed and troubled with it no more; since it will be good for nothing, it shall be good for nothing; in short, it shall cease to be a vineyard, and be turned into a wilderness: the church of the Jews shall be unchurched; their charter shall be taken away, and they shall become lo-ammi - not my people." 1. "They shall no longer be distinguished as a peculiar people, but be laid in common: I will take away the hedge thereof, and then it will soon be eaten up and become as bare as other ground." They mingled with the nations and therefore were justly scattered among them. 2. "They shall no longer be protected as God's people, but left exposed. God will not only suffer the wall to go to decay, but he will break it down, will remove all their defences from them, and then they will become an easy prey to their enemies, who have long waited for an opportunity to do them a mischief, and will now tread them down and trample upon them." 3. "They shall no longer have the face of a vineyard, and the form and shape of a church and commonwealth, but shall be levelled and laid waste." This was fulfilled when Jerusalem for their sakes was ploughed as a field, Mic 3:12. 4. "No more pains shall be taken with them by magistrates or ministers, the dressers and keepers of their vineyard; it shall not be pruned nor digged, but every thing shall run wild, and nothing shall come up but briers and thorns, the products of sin and the curse," Gen 3:18. When errors and corruptions, vice and immorality, go without check or control, no testimony borne against them, no rebuke given them or restraint put upon them, the vineyard is unpruned, is not dressed, or ridded; and then it will soon be like the vineyard of the man void of understanding, all grown over with thorns. 5. "That which completes its woe is that the dews of heaven shall be withheld; he that has the key of the clouds will command them that they rain no rain upon it, and that alone is sufficient to run it into a desert." Note, God in a way of righteous judgment, denies his grace to those that have long received it in vain. The sum of all is that those who would not bring forth good fruit should bring forth none. The curse of barrenness is the punishment of the sin of barrenness, as Mar 11:14. This had its partial accomplishment in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, its full accomplishment in the final rejection of the Jews, and has its frequent accomplishment in the departure of God's Spirit from those persons who have long resisted him and striven against him, and the removal of his gospel from those places that have been long a reproach to it, while it has been an honour to them. It is no loss to God to lay his vineyard waste; for he can, when he please, turn a wilderness into a fruitful field; and when he does thus dismantle a vineyard, it is but as he did by the garden of Eden, which, when man had by sin forfeited his place in it, was soon levelled with common soil.
V. The explanation of this parable, or a key to it (Isa 5:7), where we are told, 1. What is meant by the vineyard (it is the house of Israel, the body of the people, incorporated in one church and commonwealth), and what by the vines, the pleasant plants, the plants of God's pleasure, which he had been pleased in and delighted in doing good to; they are the men of Judah; these he had dealt graciously with, and from them he expected suitable returns. 2. What is meant by the grapes that were expected and the wild grapes that were produces: He looked for judgment and righteousness, that the people should be honest in all their dealings and the magistrates should strictly administer justice. This might reasonably be expected among a people that had such excellent laws and rules of justice given them (Deu 4:8); but the fact was quite otherwise; instead of judgment there was the cruelty of the oppressors, and instead of righteousness the cry of the oppressed. Every thing was carried by clamour and noise, and not by equity and according to the merits of the cause. It is sad with a people when wickedness has usurped the place of judgment, Ecc 3:16. It is very sad with a soul when instead of the grapes of humility, meekness, patience, love, and contempt of the world, which God looks for, there are the wild grapes of pride, passion, discontent, malice, and contempt of God - instead of the grapes of praying and praising, the wild grapes of cursing and swearing, which are a great offence to God. Some of the ancients apply this to the Jews in Christ's time, among whom God looked for righteousness (that is, that they should receive and embrace Christ), but behold a cry, that cry, Crucify him, crucify him.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–6 Now will I sing to my well beloved,.... These…
Now will I sing to my well beloved,.... These are the words of the Prophet Isaiah, being about to represent the state and condition of the people of Israel by way of parable, which he calls a song, and which he determines to sing to his beloved, and calls upon himself to do it; by whom he means either God the Father, whom he loved with all his heart and soul; or Christ, who is often called the beloved of his people, especially in the book of Solomon's song; or else the people of Israel, whom the prophet had a great affection for, being his own people; but it seems best to understand it of God or Christ:
a song of my beloved; which was inspired by him, or related to him, and was made for his honour and glory; or "a song of my uncle" (q), for another word is used here than what is in the preceding clause, and is rendered "uncle" elsewhere, see Lev 25:49 and may design King Amaziah; for, according to tradition, Amoz, the father of Isaiah, was brother to Amaziah king of Judah, and so consequently Amaziah must be uncle to Isaiah; and this might be a song of his composing, or in which he was concerned, being king of Judah, the subject of this song, as follows:
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touching his vineyard; not his uncle's, though it is true of him, but his well beloved's, God or Christ; the people of Israel, and house of Judah, are meant, comparable to a vineyard, as appears from Isa 5:7 being separated and distinguished from the rest of the nations of the world, for the use, service, and glory of God.
My beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill; or, "in a horn, the son of oil" (r); which designs the land of Israel, which was higher than other lands; and was, as some observe, in the form of a horn, longer than it was broad, and a very fruitful country, a land of olive oil, a land flowing with milk and honey, Deu 8:7. The Targum is,
"the prophet said, I will sing now to Israel, who is like unto a vineyard, the seed of Abraham, my beloved, a song of my beloved, concerning his vineyard. My people, my beloved Israel, I gave to them an inheritance in a high mountain, in a fat land.''
(q) "canticum patruelis mei", V. L. (r) "in cornu, filio olei", V. L.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 6 Israel, God's vineyard, his mercies, and their faithfulness, should…
Israel, God's vineyard, his mercies, and their faithfulness, should be laid waste, ver. 1-7. Judgments upon covetousness, ver. 8-10. Upon drunkards, and the lascivious, ver. 11, 12. The great misery of the Jews, ver. 13-17. Judgments on impiety, scoffers at God's threatnings, those who corrupt the notions of good and ill, strong-drinkers, and unjust Judges, ver. 18-23. God's anger, and the Chaldeans army against them, ver. 24-30.
Now - I will record it to be a witness for God, and against you, as Moses did his song, Deut. xxxi, 19; xxxii, 1. To - To the Lord of the vineyard. Of my beloved - Not devised by me, but inspired by God. Vineyard - His church. Hill - Hills being places most commodious for vines.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 6 This chapter begins with representing, in a beautiful parable,
CHAPTER V
This chapter begins with representing, in a beautiful parable,
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the tender care of God for his people, and their unworthy
returns for his goodness, 1-7.
The parable or allegory is then dropped; and the prophet, in
plain terms, reproves and threatens them for their wickedness;
particularly for their covetousness, 8-10;
intemperance, 11;
and inattention to the warnings of Providence, 12.
Then follows an enumeration of judgments as the necessary
consequence. Captivity and famine appear with all their
horrors, 13.
Hades, or the grave, like a ravenous monster, opens wide its
jaws, and swallows down its myriads, 14.
Distress lays hold on all ranks, 15;
and God is glorified in the execution of his judgments, 16;
till the whole place is left desolate, a place for the flocks
to range in, 17.
The prophet then pauses; and again resumes his subject,
reproving them for several other sins, and threatening them
with woes and vengeance, 18-24;
after which he sums up the whole of his awful denunciation in a
very lofty and spirited epiphonema or conclusion. The God of
armies, having hitherto corrected to no purpose, is represented
with inimitable majesty, as only giving a hist, and a swarm of
nations hasten to his standard, 25-27.
Upon a guilty race, unpitied by heaven or by earth, they
execute their commission; and leave the land desolate and dark,
without one ray of comfort to cheer the horrid gloom, 28-30.
This chapter likewise stands single and alone, unconnected with the preceding or following. The subject of it is nearly the same with that of the first chapter. It is a general reproof of the Jews for their wickedness; but it exceeds that chapter in force, in severity, in variety, and elegance; and it adds a more express declaration of vengeance by the Babylonian invasion.
NOTES ON CHAP. V
Verse 1. Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved - "Let me sing now a song," c.] A MS., respectable for its antiquity, adds the word שיר shir, a song, after נא na which gives so elegant a turn to the sentence by the repetition of it in the next member, and by distinguishing the members so exactly in the style and manner in the Hebrew poetical composition, that I am much inclined to think it genuine.
A song of my beloved - "A song of loves"] דודי dodey, for דודים dodim: status constructus pro absoluto, as the grammarians say, as Mic 6:16; Lam 3:14; Lam 3:66, so Archbishop Secker. Or rather, in all these and the like cases, a mistake of the transcribers, by not observing a small stroke, which in many MSS., is made to supply the מ mem, of the plural, thus, דודי dodi. שירת דודים shirath dodim is the same with שיר ידידת shir yedidoth, Ps 45:1. In this way of understanding it we avoid the great impropriety of making the author of the song, and the person to whom it is addressed, to be the same.
In a very fruitful hill - "On a high and fruitful hill."] Heb. בקרן בן שמן bekeren ben shamen, "on a horn the son of oil." The expression is highly descriptive and poetical. "He calls the land of Israel a horn, because it is higher than all lands; as the horn is higher than the whole body; and the son of oil, because it is said to be a land flowing with milk and honey." - Kimchi on the place. The parts of animals are, by an easy metaphor, applied to parts of the earth, both in common and poetical language. A promontory is called a cape or head; the Turks call it a nose. "Dorsum immane mari summo;" Virgil, a back, or ridge of rocks: -
"Hanc latus angustum jam se cogentis in arctum
Hesperiae tenuem producit in aequora linguam,
Adriacas flexis claudit quae cornibus undas."
Lucan, ii. 612, of Brundusium, i.e., βρεντεσιον, which, in the ancient language of that country, signifies stag's head, says Strabo. A horn is a proper and obvious image for a mountain or mountainous country. Solinus, cap. viii., says, "Italiam, ubi longius processerit, in cornua duo scindi;" that is, the high ridge of the Alps, which runs through the whole length of it, divides at last into two ridges, one going through Calabria, the other through the country of the Brutii. "Cornwall is called by the inhabitants in the British tongue Kernaw, as lessening by degrees like a horn, running out into promontories like so many horns. For the Britons call a horn corn, in the plural kern." - Camden. "And Sammes is of opinion, that the country had this name originally from the Phoenicians, who traded hither for tin; keren, in their language, being a horn." - Gibson.
Here the precise idea seems to be that of a high mountain standing by itself; "vertex montis, aut pars montis ad aliis divisa;" which signification, says I. H. Michaelis, Bibl. Hallens., Not. in loc., the word has in Arabic.
Judea was in general a mountainous country, whence Moses sometimes calls it The Mountain, "Thou shalt plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance;" Ex 15:17. "I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land beyond Jordan; that goodly mountain, and Lebanon;" De 3:25. And in a political and religious view it was detached and separated from all the nations round it. Whoever has considered the descriptions given of Mount Tabor, (see Reland, Palaestin.; Eugene Roger, Terre Sainte, p. 64,) and the views of it which are to be seen in books of travels, (Maundrell, p. 114; Egmont and Heyman, vol. ii., p. 25; Thevenot, vol. i., p. 429,) its regular conic form rising singly in a plain to a great height, from a base small in proportion, and its beauty and fertility to the very top, will have a good idea of "a horn the son of oil;" and will perhaps be induced to think that the prophet took his image from that mountain.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5 Isa 5:1. Now will I sing, &c. — Bishop…
Isa 5:1. Now will I sing, &c. — Bishop Lowth translates this clause, “Let me sing now a song to my beloved; a song of loves concerning his vineyard.” This is the exordium, a kind of title placed before the song; which song he records, as Moses did his, that it might be a witness for God, and against Israel. The beloved, to whom the prophet addresses the song, is the Lord of the vineyard, as appears by the latter clause of the verse, namely, God, or his Messiah, whom the prophet loved and served, and for whose glory, eclipsed by the barrenness of the vineyard, he was greatly concerned: a song of my beloved — Not devised by me, but inspired by God, which, therefore, it behooveth you to lay deeply to heart: touching his vineyard — The house of Israel, (Isa 5:7,) or his church among the Israelites, often, and very properly, called a vineyard, because of God’s singular regard to it, and care and cultivation of it; his delight in it, and expectation of good fruit from it. My beloved hath, &c. — Hebrew, לידידי היה כרם, my beloved hath had a vineyard, namely, for many ages, with which he hath long taken great pains, and on which he hath bestowed much culture; in a very fruitful hill — Hebrew, on a horn, the son of oil, “an expression,” says Bishop Lowth, “highly descriptive and poetical.” According to Kimchi the prophet gives the land of Israel this appellation because of its height and fertility. Accordingly, the bishop renders the phrase, on a high and fruitful hill, observing, that “the parts of animals are, by an easy metaphor, applied to parts of the earth, both in common and poetical language. A promontory is called a cape, or head; the Turks call it a nose; a ridge of rocks, a back, (‘dorsum immane mari summo, a huge back in the deep sea;’ Virg.) Thus a horn is a proper and obvious image for a mountain, or mountainous country.” Hills are places most commodious for vines, and the hills of Canaan being very fertile, the phrase, son of oil, is added to express that circumstance, both because oil includes the idea of fatness, and because oil-olive was one of the most valued productions of that land. Indeed the word horn also is frequently used in Scripture as an emblem of plenty, their wealth consisting very much in their herds, as well as flocks.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–6 Now will I sing - This is an indication…
Now will I sing - This is an indication that what follows is poetic, or is adapted to be sung or chanted.
To my well-beloved - The word used here - ידיד yedı̂yd - is a term of endearment. It properly denotes a friend; a favorite; one greatly beloved. It is applied to saints as being the beloved, or the favorites of God, in Psa 127:2; Deu 33:12. In this place, it is evidently applied to Yahweh, the God of the Jewish people. As there is some reason to believe that the God of the Jews - the manifested Deity who undertook their deliverance from Egypt, and who was revealed as “their” God under the name of ‘the Angel of the covenant’ - was the Messiah, so it may be that the prophet here meant to refer to him. It is not, however, to the Messiah “to come.” It does not refer to the God incarnate - to Jesus of Nazareth; but to the God of the Jews, in his capacity as their lawgiver and protector in the time of Isaiah; not to him in the capacity of an incarnate Saviour.
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A Song of my beloved - Lowth, ‘A song of loves,’ by a slight change in the Hebrew. The word דוד dôd usually denotes ‘an uncle,’ a father’s brother. But it also means one beloved, a friend, a lover; Son 1:13-14, Son 1:16; Son 2:3, Son 2:8, Son 2:9; Son 4:16. Here it refers to Jehovah, and expresses the tender and affectionate attachment which the prophet had for his character and laws.
Touching his vineyard - The Jewish people are often represented under the image of a vineyard, planted and cultivated by God; see Ps. 80; Jer 2:21; Jer 12:10. Our Saviour also used this beautiful figure to denote the care and attention which God had bestowed on his people; Mat 21:33 ff; Mar 12:1, following.
My beloved - God.
Hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill - Hebrew ‘On a horn of the son of oil.’ The word “horn” used here in the Hebrew, denotes the “brow, apex,” or sharp point of a hill. The word is thus used in other languages to denote a hill, as in the Swiss words “shreckhorn, buchorn.” Thus “Cornwall,” in England, is called in the old British tongue “Kernaw,” as lessening by degrees, like a horn, running out into promontories, like so many horns; for the Britons called a horn “corn,” and in the plural “kern.” The term ‘horn’ is not unfrequently applied to hills. Thus, Pococke tells us (vol. ii. p. 67), that there is a low mountain in Galilee which has both its ends raised in such a manner as to look like two mounts, which are called the ‘Horns of Hutin.’ Harmer, however, supposes that the term is used here to denote the land of Syria, from its resemblance to the shape ofa horn; Obs. iii. 242. But the idea is, evidently, that the land on which God respresents himself as having planted his vineyard, was like an elevated hill that was adapted eminently to such a culture. It may mean either the “top” of a mountain, or a little mountain, or a “peak” divided from others. The most favorable places for vineyards were on the sides of hills, where they would be exposed to the sun. - Shaw’s “Travels,” p. 338. Thus Virgil says:
- denique apertos
Bacchus amat colles.
‘Bacchus loves open hills;’ “Georg.” ii. 113. The phrase, “son of oil,” is used in accordance with the Jewish custom, where “son” means descendant, relative, etc.; see the note at Mat 1:1. Here it means that it was so fertile that it might be called the very “son of oil,” or fatness, that is, fertility. The image is poetic, and very beautiful; denoting that God had planted his people in circumstances where he had a right to expect great growth in attachment to him. It was not owing to any want of care on his part, that they were not distinguished for piety. The Chaldee renders this verse, ‘The prophet said, I will sing now to Israel, who is compared to a vineyard, the seed of Abraham my beloved: a song of my beloved to his vineyard.’
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1–6 My cousin. So the prophet calls Christ, as being…
My cousin. So the prophet calls Christ, as being of his family and kindred, by descending from the house of David. (Challoner) (Menochius) --- Hebrew and Septuagint, "beloved." Dod may also mean a near relation. (Calmet) --- Isaias being of the same tribe, sets before us the lamentations of Christ over Jerusalem, Luke xix. 41. (Worthington) --- The Hebrews had canticles of sorrow, as well as of joy. The prophet thus endeavours to impress more deeply on the minds of the people what he had been saying. The master of the vineyard is God himself, ver. 7. (Calmet) --- Hill. Literally, in the horn, the son of oil. (Challoner) --- The best vines grew among olive and fig trees. (Doubdan 21.) --- Septuagint, "in a horn, (mountain) in a fat soil." (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 2. The bad fruits of the present in the…
2. The bad fruits of the present in the light of the glorious divine fruit of the last time. Isa_5:1-30
a. THE BAD FRUITS OF THE PRESENT SHOWN IN THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD
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Isa_5:1-7
1 Now will I sing 1to my well-beloved
A song of my beloved touching his vineyard.
My well beloved hath a vineyard
In 2 3a very fruitful hill:
2 And he 4 5fenced 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 6made 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 7trodden 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 8his pleasant plant:
And he looked for 9judgment, but behold 10oppression;
For righteousness, but behold a cry.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Isa_5:1. Attention has often been called to the artistic, rythmical structure of Isa_5:1 : to אָשִׁירָה corresponds שִׁירַת; to לִידִידִי corresponds דּוֹדִי. The first clause of the verse concludes with לִכַדְמוֹ; the second begins with כֶּרֶם, and the third word is again לִידִידִי. קֶרֶן rhymes to קֶרֶם, and the last three words of the verse end with ֶן. Moreover the rythm continues into the 2d
Ver.; for the three verbs that begin it, resemble one another in formation and ending.
The verb שִׁיר joined with the noun שִׁיר occurs of joyful song in Isaiah in two other places, Isa_26:1; Isa_42:10. שִׁירָה always has the pronoun הַזּאֹת after it (Exo_15:1; Num_21:17; Deu_31:19; Deu_31:21-22; Deu_31:30; Deu_32:44; 2Sa_22:1; Psa_18:1); only in Isaiah, who beside here uses it Isa_23:15, is it determined by only a noun following in the genitive. יָדִיד (the closely bound, beloved, friend) used by Isaiah only here. Comp. Deu_33:12; Jer_11:15; coll. Isa_7:7; Psa_60:7; Psa_127:2 דּוֹד, kindred to יָדִיד, is originally an abstract noun = amor, caritas (comp. Son_5:9) especially in the plural (love deeds, fondling, Son_1:2; Son_4:4, etc.; Eze_16:8; Pro_7:18, etc.). Then דּוֹד stands for the person beloved (compare the words Liebschaft, Bekanntschaft, acquaintance, מוֹדַעַת Rth_3:2) and signifies both the beloved generally (Son_2:3, etc.), and a beloved and near relation (Lev_10:4; 1Sa_10:16, etc.). That it here means the beloved generally appears from its connection with יָדִיד. This word, too, does not again occur in Isaiah. לְ indicates the object after verbis decendi: Gen_20:13; Lev_14:54; Psa_3:3; Psa_22:31; Isa_27:2, etc.—קֶרֶן is used only here in the Old Testament of a horn shaped hill. In Ovid mountain spurs are called cornua terrœ. In Greek too κέρας is so used. Compare the German Schreckhorn, Wetterhorn, etc.—The expression בן־שׁמן occurs only here. Yet comp. גֵּיא שְׁמָנִים Isa_28:1, and the kindred expressions used of the fruitfulness of the soil. שָׁמֵן (Isa_30:23; Eze_34:14), מִשְׁמַנִּים (Gen_27:28; Gen_27:39) אַשְׁמַנֵּים (Isa_59:10).
Isa_5:2. עִזֵּק is ἅπ. λεγ., but its meaning is definitely derived from the dialects.—סִקֵּל in this sense only here and Isa_62:10.—נָטַע with double accusative comp. Jer_2:21; where, beside, the word is borrowed from our passage.—שׂרֵק only here and Jer_2:21; Gen_49:11, שׂרקה; Isa_16:8, שְׂרוּקִּים: etymology doubtful, some taking the underlying idea, to be without seeds, others the shooting up, others purple color [Zec_1:8]: comp. Leyrer in Herzog’s R. Encycl. XVII. p. 612.
Isa_5:3. On “Jerusalem and Judah” comp. at Isa_2:1. The expression ישֵׁב ירושׁלם occurs beside in Isa_8:14; Isa_22:21; Isa_10:24 ישֵׁב צִיּוֹן occurs. Except these only Zec_12:7-8; Zec_12:10, uses ישׁב י׳. The more usual expression is ישְׁבֵי י׳; 2Ki_23:2, especially in Jer. (Isa_8:1; Isa_11:2; Isa_13:13, etc.), and in 2 Chron. (2Ch_20:15; 2Ch_21:11; 2Ch_21:13; 2Ch_32:26; 2Ch_32:33, etc.).
Isa_5:4. On לעשׂות Gesenius § 132, Rem. 1.—מזוע קויתי וגו׳. Comp. 1. 2.
Isa_5:5. משׂוכה, which some of the MSS. write with Dag. forte, is = שׂךְ (Lam_2:6) and מְסוּכָה (Mic_7:4; Pro_15:19). The word occurs only here in Isaiah. The meaning is: a hedge, a thorn hurdle, from שׂוּךְ sepire (Hos_2:6 (8); Job_1:10). והיה לבער et erit ad depascendum, comp. Isa_3:14; Isa_4:4; Isa_6:13. The expression לְבָעֵר occurs also with the meaning “ad comburendum;” Isa_44:15, comp. Isa_40:16; Isa_50:11.—פָּרַץ in the sense “to tear down” only here. Beside this in Isa_54:3, in the sense “to break out, extend oneself abroad.” גָדֵר may signify the low wall of a vineyard as well as the high wall of a city: comp. Jer_49:3; Num_22:24. In Isaiah the word does not again occur. Hedge and wall might be combined in such a way that the hedge surrounded the foot of the wall so as also to protect it. Yet perhaps the double enclosure is not to be pressed literally, but, may be construed rhetorically, since no actual vineyard is meant.—מִדְמָם conculcatio: Isa_7:25; Isaiah 10, 6; Isa_28:18.—Giving up His vineyard, the Lord abandons it to desolation.
Isa_5:6. שִׁית בָּתָה appears to correspond to the expression עָשָה כָלָה often used, by Jer. especially, but which does not occur in Isaiah. בָּתָה is ἅπ. λεγ. According to its meaning and derivation it is one with בַּתָּה Isa_7:19. The verb בָּתַת does not occur in Hebrew. Yet the meaning “abscindere” is established from the dialects. From that develops בַּת = the close-cut-off, exactly measured out, as the name of a fluid measure, (comp. Isa_5:10), and בָּתָה vastatio and בַּתָּה abscissum, prœruptum.—The vineyard abandoned to desolation will, of course, no more be pruned (זָמַר in this sense only here in Isa., otherwise Isa_12:5) and no more digged (עדר in the sense of “to dig” only again Isa_7:25). Consequently it springs up with thorns and thistles (the construction of עָלה with the accusative like Isa_34:13; Pro_24:31. The two words שָׁמִיר and שַׁיִת, excepting Isa_32:13, are always joined together by Isa_7:23-25; Isa_9:17; Isa_10:17; Isa_27:4. Both words, as one may see from the passages cited, signify combustible vegetation of the desert, although nothing as yet has been established concerning the etymology and meaning of either. But comp. Dietrich, Abhandl. fur semit. Wortforschung, p. 73, and the Denkschrift der Erfurter Akademie von S. Cassel, 1854, p. 74 sqq., cited by Delitzsch.
Isa_5:7. נְטַע occurs again in Isa_17:10-11. Isaiah uses שַֽׁעֲשוּעִים only here.—מִשְׂפָּח occurs only here. The verb שָׂפַח occurs in Hebrew only in the Piel form שִׂפַּח Isa_3:17. It is identical with ספח (Hab_2:15) according to a frequent exchange of sound. Not only the Arabic saphacha proves that סָפַח means effundere, but also passages like Job_30:7; then the substantive סָפִיחַ that means effusio, inundatio (Job_14:19) and effusum, i.e., especially the grain that falls out (Lev_25:5; Lev_25:11). Of course then מִשְׂפָּח means first of all effusio. But for the sake of a play on words, an author may indulge in such an incomplete expression. The reader at once thinks of passages like Isa_4:4; Isa_1:15, and fills out the conception “sanguinis” of himself. The word צְעָקָח cry, is not repeated in Isaiah, he also chooses it for the sake of the play on words. For my own part I have allowed myself to waive a literal translation in favor of a likeness of sound and to use a word that at least corresponds to the proper intention of the Prophet.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. When we read the introduction of this piece it sounds like a lovely musical prelude. All sounds like singing. It is as if the Prophet tried every harmonious sound of speech in order to turn the hearts of his hearers to joy. But it happens to us as he says, Isa_5:7, it happened to God in reference to Israel. Instead of a joyful report we receive a mournful one; instead of happiness, a gloomy prospect of evil is presented. The piece therefore bears the character of bitter irony. This is especially in the beginning carried out even to minuteness. The Prophet makes as if he would sing a joyous song, a song of the vineyard, thus perhaps of wine, a drinking song! It shall be of the vineyard of a boon companion. And then the Prophet describes the situation. It is a good site. For there is no better than on a sunny knoll with a good, fat soil (Isa_5:1 a). But the owner aided nature as much as possible by art (Isa_5:2 a.). He had a right therefore to expect a good yield. His hopes were disappointed. Instead of good grapes the vines bore wild grapes (Isa_5:2). Thus far the Prophet speaks. From this point he lets the owner of the vine speak. One looked to hear of a real vineyard. But what sort of a vineyard is that whose owner accuses it and charges it with guilt! Now, therefore, when the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah are summoned to judge between the vineyard and its lord (Isa_5:3), in as much as he has faithfully done his best, yet instead of grapes has gathered only wild grapes (Isa_5:4), it is noticed at once that behind this is concealed something else than the story of a real, natural vineyard. And step by step this becomes plainer. For the lord of the vineyard declares that he will tear away hedge and wall, and give the vineyard up to be browsed upon and trampled down (Isa_5:5), yea, that he will make a ruin of it, he will no more hoe and prune it, but let it grow rank with thorns and thistles, and will forbid the heavens to rain on it (Isa_5:6). This last word lifts the mask entirely. It is now seen who is the owner and who the vineyard. And this is now (Isa_5:7) openly declared: Jehovah is the lord; Israel, summoned to judge between the lord and his vineyard, is itself the vineyard. The Lord had expected of Israel the fruits of righteousness, but only gathered the fruits of unrighteousness. What a contrast between this fruit of the land and that which, according to Isa_4:2, the land shall one time bear!
2. I will sing—wild grapes. Isa_5:1-2. Everything in this passage tends to express the idea of disappointment, the contrast between incipient hope and the final, mournful event. Hence the joyous, one may say the lark-like trilling commencement. Every harvest is preceded by a season of hope. Israel too awakened such. How joyous this was, Isa_5:1 portrays. One must not, therefore, be misled by the peculiar joyous tone of Isa_5:1, to think that here begins an essentially new and independent piece. For this sound-coloring of Isa_5:1, is intentional, is art.
The address begins with אָשִׁירָה, I will sing. One, therefore, expects a שִׁיר, a jovial song: but a קינָה. (Amo_8:10), a lament follows. What a contrast, therefore, between the sixfold woe of Isa_5:8 sqq., and this joy bespeaking beginning! לִידִידִי seems, at first sight, to be an ordinary dative, and to say that the prophet would sing to his friend a song, thus likely a song of right hearty and enlivening contents. But לְכַדְמוֹ suggests that that may be an incorrect meaning: for this must mean “in regard to his vineyard.” Thus לְ must here be לְ of the object. Then it seems likely that in the preceding case it has the same force. This conjecture becomes a certainty when we read further “my friend (לידידי) had a vineyard.” From this it becomes plain: 1) that the friend in each case is the same, for the owner of the vineyard is called both דּוֹד and יָדִיד; 2) that we must translate לידידי in Isa_5:1 “of my friend,” for the song shall treat of the vineyard of his friend; 3) what the Prophet would sing is not a song of his own composing, but one that his friend has made of his vineyard, so that “I will sing” is qualified by the following, “a song of my friend,” &c.; 4) from the words “my friend had a vineyard,” &c, we know that the song of the friend does not yet begin. For to the end of Isa_5:2 we have still the words of the Prophet, by which, as it were, he preludes the song of the friend, in order to acquaint the hearer with the facts that the song presupposes. Thus the Prophet gives us one disappointment after the other. Though they are only of a formal kind, still they prepare us for the more earnest and material disappointments that follow.
We have already remarked that with “my friend had,” &c., the song of the friend by no means begins, as one would expect, and that what the Prophet himself says is by no means a song, but a very earnest presentation of gloomy facts. This is a further disappointment. That בְּן, as commentators remark, signifies the natural fruitfulness in opposition to what is artificial appears to me to lie less in the expression itself than in its relation to Isa_5:2. The usus loquendi in itself is well known: Umbreit’s translation “on the prominence of a fat spot” is incorrect. For בּן־שׁמן in itself is not a “fat spot” but a real son, a man, whom the notion “oil” characterizes (comp. בְּנֵי יִצְהַרZec_4:14). It can only become predicate of a place by connection with an idea of place. Such is קרן with which בן־שׁמן stands in apposition. If they were taken as standing in a genitive relation the meaning would be: horn of a man of oil, of one oiled, of an anointed man. However, to this naturally fruitful spot, the owner had done everything that the art of wine culture could suggest. He had hoed it, gathered out the stones, and planted it with a choice vine. But not only did the owner undertake such labor as was important for the flourishing of the vines themselves, but also such as were for the protection of the fruit and putting it to use. Such are the watch tower (vid. Mat_21:33) and the wine press (יֶקֶב the lower wine-press trough, comp. Isa_16:10, Num_18:27, &c), both of them costly, &c.,—especially the latter, hence וְגַםand also—demanding hard labor, because the wine-press trough, as חָצֵב (Isa_10:15; Isa_22:16; Isa_51:1; Isa_51:9) indicates, was hewn out of the rock. See Herzog’sR. Encycl. VII., p. 508, Art. Wine-press, by Leyrer. But—disappointed hope! Instead of עֲנָבִים (in Isa. only here, and Isa_5:2; Isa_5:4) good grapes, the vineyard bore only בְּאֻשִׁיםsour grapes. This last word occurs only here and Isa_5:4. It comes from בָּאַשׁ “to be bad, stink,” and means the fruit of the wild vine, the labrusca. It has, therefore, happened to the choice vine according to the word of Jer. (Isa_2:21), which may be regarded as a commentary on our passage: “thou art turned into a degenerate plant of a strange vine.” The noble vine is degenerated and become wild, so that it produces wild grapes instead of grapes.—Comp. Job_31:40.
3. And now, O inhabitants—no rain upon it.
Isa_5:3-6. The song of the “friend” begins first at Isa_5:3. It is, however, no gladsome song, but a lament and a complaint. And the friend is not some good friend or boon companion of the Prophet, but the Lord Himself, which comes out clearly at the end of Isa_5:6. This one, now, summons the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah to judge between him and his vineyard.
Judge between me, etc.—Comp. Isa_2:4; Exo_18:16; Eze_34:17; Eze_34:20; Eze_34:22. The summons of Isa_5:3 to judge between the vineyard and its owner, must of itself awaken the thought that no actual, physical vineyard is meant here. For where is the owner that would ever think of laying a complaint against his vineyard? One sees from this, and other obvious traits of the description, that the subject here is not an ordinary vineyard and its owner; and Isa_5:6 b. one is made aware that the owner is God Himself. For only He has the power to cause it to rain, and to shut up the rain. Notice, moreover, how Isa_5:1-2 the Prophet himself has spoken, although announcing a song of the friend, and only at Isa_5:3 the friend begins to speak, in that with “and now” he takes up the discourse of the Prophet and continues it. One may say: quite unnoticed the Prophet glides over into the part played by him whom properly he has to produce to view. And to the first “and now” corresponds a second in Isa_5:5, that introduced the judgment, so that the extraordinary judgment begins in precisely the same way that the extraordinary complaint does.
The Lord will command the clouds to let no rain fall on the vineyard. With these words the vail falls completely. It is plain now that the beginning of Isa_5:1 was irony. A fearful disappointment comes on those that had disappointed the Lord Himself, and, by the art of the Prophet, the reader, too, must share this disappointment, in that he is conducted from the charming pictures of Isa_5:1, to the dreadful ones that are now to follow.
For the vineyard—a cry.
Isa_5:7. Like the prophet Nathan, 2Sa_12:5, first provoked King David to a stern judgment of a wicked man by means of a fictitious story, and then exclaimed: “thou art the man,” so here Isaiah explains to the men of Jerusalem and Judah, after they had at least silently given their assent to the judgment on the bad vineyard: “The vineyard of Jehovah is the house of Israel.” But this statement is connected by כִּיfor, with what precedes, because a consequence of this fact was already indicated at the end of Isa_5:6. For this not letting it rain explains itself from the fact that the Lord Himself is the owner, and the vineyard is the house of Israel. For, though one must admit that Isa_5:7 refers to all that precedes, yet still that trait in Isa_5:1-6 which especially receives its light from the identity of the owner with Jehovah, is precisely that which we read in Isa_5:6 b.
But why does the prophet vary from the designation “Judah and Jerusalem” hitherto employed by him? Why does he here make “house of Israel” and “men of Judah” parallel? Caspari attempts in his Beiträgen, p. 164, an extended proof that here, as Isa_4:2 and Isa_1:2, Israel is Judah as Israel, and as Israel in Judah. But one naturally asks: why, if Isaiah meant only Judah, does he not name Judah exclusively? Why does he suddenly drop the designation used hitherto? But if with the name “house of Israel” he designates Judah (to be) as Israel, is it not therewith admitted that the conception Israel extends over Judah, and is not then this more comprehensive Israel in its totality, the vineyard of Jehovah? It is true that the figure of the vineyard is nowhere in older writings applied either to Judah or Israel. But the Lord calls Israel His people (Isa_3:12, &c), His flock (Psa_95:7, &c), His peculiar treasure (Exo_19:5; Deu_6:6), His inheritance (Jer_2:7; Jer_16:18, &c), and all these expressions refer to Israel entire. Thus it cannot be contested that Israel in the narrower sense belongs also to the vineyard of Jehovah. If now, too, in general, as can not be denied, Judah and Jerusalem form the principal object of the discourse (Isa_2:1), yet the prophet may here and there cast a glance aside at the kingdom of Israel. Prophets of Jehovah can never forget that Israel, which hastens faster to the abyss of destruction than Judah, as Jer. expressly says: Jer_31:20; comp. Jer_11:11 sqq. I therefore share the view of Vitringa, Drechsler, Delitzsch, that “house of Israel” of course means all Israel. This view is not refuted but rather confirmed by the fact that the men of Judah are presently called “the plant of his pleasure.” For this expression that accords to Judah a certain precedence, suits better when “house of Israel” does not signify Judah over again, but the Israel of the Ten Tribes.
The Lord had planted with pleasure. But He was outrageously deceived in His just expectations. He had expected a “fruit of the earth” Isa_4:2, that would do Him honor. But behold! instead of מִשְׁפָטmishpot, He gathers מִשְׂפָּחmispahh: instead of צְדָקָהtzedhaka, he gathers צְעָקָהtzeaka. The poet here choicely depicts by the word-likeness, which yet conceals a total difference of meaning, the deceptive appearance in the conduct of the Israelites, which at first looked like good vines and then developed a wild wine.
Footnotes:
[1]of my friend.
[2]Heb. the horn of the son of oil.
[3]a hill of fat soil.
[4]Or, made a wall about it.
[5]hoed it.
[6]Heb. hewed.
[7]Heb. for a treading.
[8]Heb. plant of his pleasure.
[9]auf Gutthat und siehe da: Blutthat! Und auf Gerechtigkeit, und siehe da: Schlechtigkeit. [The commentator's license in translating with reference to the sound and sense combined may be imitated in English thus: He waited for equity, and lo, iniquity: For right and lo, riot.—Tr.]
[10]Heb. a scab.
b. THE BAD FRUITS AND THEIR EFFECTS MORE PARTICULARLY DESCRIBED IN A SIXFOLD WOE–AT THE SAME TIME A TWOFOLD CONCLUSIONS OF THE WHOLE DISCOURSE
Isa_5:8-30
8 Woe unto them that join house to house,
That lay field to field,
Till there be no place,
That11 they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!
9 12 In mine ears said the Lord of hosts,
13 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 wine14 inflame them!
12 15 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe,
16 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,17 because they have no knowledge:
And18 their honorable men are19 famished,
And their multitude dried up with thirst.
14 Therefore hell hath enlarged 20herself,
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 21the mean man shall be brought down,
Andf 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,
And22 23God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.
17 Then shall the lambs feed 24after their manner,
And the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat.
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 25that call evil good, and good evil;
That put darkness for light, and light for darkness:
21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes,
And prudent 26in 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 27the fire devoureth the stubble,
And the flame consumeth the 28chaff,
So their root shall be as rottenness,
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 carcasses were29 30torn in the midst of the streets.
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, 31they 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,
Their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint,
And their wheels like a whirlwind:
29 Their roaring shall be like a32 lion,
They shall 33roar 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 34they shall roar against m them like the roaring of the sea:
And if one look unto the land, behold darkness and 35sorrow,
36 And the light is darkened37 in the heavens thereof.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Isa_5:8. נָגַע is often construed with בְּ: Gen_26:11; 32:33; Lev_11:36; 1Ki_19:5; 1Ki_19:7, etc. Comp. especially Hos_4:2. Hiphil הִגִּיעַ occurs beside only Isa_6:7; Isa_8:8; Isa_25:12; Isa_26:5; Isa_30:4. קָרַב is generally not construed with בְּ. But when Drechsler says that this construction never occurs, it is asserting too much. For Psa_91:10 it is said “No plague יִקְרַב בְּאָֽהֳלֶךָ.” Comp. Jdg_19:13. In our passage the construction of the first clause has doubtless influenced that of the second. Hiph. הִקְרִיב only again Isa_26:17.——אֶפֶם (defectus, non-existent) occurs oftener in the second part than in the first: Isa_40:17; Isa_41:12; Isa_41:29; Isa_44:6; Isa_44:14; Isa_44:22; Isa_46:9, Isa_52:4; Isa_52:10; Isa_54:15. In the first part it occurs again only Isa_34:12.——The Hophal הוּשַׁבְתֶּם (Isa_44:26) indicates that their dwelling alone in the land was not a natural thing, but something contrived. Compare complaints of like import Isa_3:14 sq.; Mic_2:2; Mic_3:2, sq.
Isa_5:9. In mine ears, etc. In Isa_22:14 an address of Jehovah begins with the words “and it was revealed in mine ears.” etc. In our passage וְנִגְלָה “and, it was revealed” is omitted. It does not follow from this that this or some similar word has fallen out of the text. For the Prophet may very well have had in thought the bare notion of existence as predicate of his sentence; “In mine ears is Jehovah Sabaoth.” It must not however be construed in a pregnant sense: Jehovah keeps ever saying to me (liegt mir in den Ohren). For there is not a thought of any resistance on the part of the Prophet that had provoked a persistence on the Lord’s side. Neither may the expression mean: Jehovah whispers in my ear; as if the secrecy of the address were meant by it; for there exists no reason for such secrecy. But the Prophet will only say, that what follows he has clearly heard by the inward ear as the word of Jehovah. There lies thus in the expression a distinguishing of actual from merely imaginary hearing. Comp. Psa_44:2; Job_28:22; Job_33:8.
The pointing of the word באזני as a pausel from appears to have for its object to separate it from what follows and to signify thereby that in this word alone is contained the predicate of the sentence.—לשׁמה again Isa_13:9, comp. Deu_28:37; Mic_6:16.—מאין יושׁב comp. Isa_6:11; Jer_2:15; Jer_4:7, etc.; Zep_2:5; Zep_3:6.
Isa_5:11. A likeness of structure is to be noticed in the two halves of the verse. The verb. fin. in the phrase שֵׁכָר יִרְדּפוּ relates to the foregoing participle, not simply like יַקְרִיבוּ Isa_5:8, as the dominant form, but at the same time as assigning thepurpose; and so is it too with יַדְלִיקֵם—The Pi. of אָחֵר again in Isa_46:13. נֶשֶׁף from נָשַׁף to breathe, to blow, the time of day when cooler air stirs, the morning and evening twilight: comp. Isa_21:4; Isa_59:10. The verb דָּלַק (comp. Eze_24:10) is found only here in Isaiah.
Isa_5:12. If משׁתיהם (sing. comp. Gesenius, § 93, 9) were subject, it must follow וְהָיָה, for this position is constantly maintained, after a verb with Vav consec. But if it were predicate, it would say nothing; for what else would music and wine be but a feast. For that והיה would be superfluous. We construe הָיָה therefore, not as mere copula, but in the sense of being on hand; and there is on hand.——The combination of מעשׂה with יד in a manfold sense is quite current with Isa_2:8; Isa_17:8; Isa_19:25; Isa_29:23; Isa_37:19; Isa_60:21; Isa_64:7; Isa_65:22.
Isa_5:13. גָלָה in the sense of “making bare, i.e., clearing out the land” occurs in Isaiah only again Isa_24:11, which passage generally resembles this one.—מְתֵי רָעָב has without reason been discredited, and instead some would read מְזֵי רעב according to Deu_32:24, for מְתִים is wont to be used in a contemptuous sense, comp. Isa_3:25.—צִחֶה (comp. Green’s Gram. § 187,1 b.) is adjectivum ad f. אִלֵּם ,נִבֵּן ,עִוֵּרִ etc., and only occurs here.
Isa_5:14. פָּעַר aperire, that always stands with פֶּה (Job_16:10; Job_29:23; Psa_119:131) occurs in Isaiah only here. The same with לִבְלִי (comp. Job_38:41; Job_41:25). חֹק again only Isa_24:5 .——The suffixes of the nouns are to be referred to the notion “Jerusalem,” although immediately before Isa_5:13, the masculine עַם is used. But it is plain that the Prophet in Isa_5:14 b., aims at a mimicry of sound. For this purpose he employs the clear a sound as often as possible. Delitzsch calls attention to the omission to draw the tone back on the penult of the word ועלז, “so that one may hear the object that is falling down as it rolls and at last strikes bottom.” הָדָר comp. Isa_2:10; Isa_2:19; Isa_2:21; Isa_35:2; Isa_53:2.
Isa_5:15. The aorists ויגבה ,וישׁפל ,וישׁח are to be construed as Prœterita prophetica. Also תשׁפלנה, with the Vav preceding and separate, is, as Drechsler has remarked = וַתִּשְׁפַלְנָה.
Isa_5:17. רָעוּ is to be taken absolutely, without object. What is understood suggests itself from what precedes. The pronoun of the third person is, as object of the phrase, very often omitted; Gen_2:19; Gen_3:21; Gen_6:19-21, etc. It is not necessary, with Gesenius to take כדברם for כִּבְדָבְרָם: for רָעָה very often stands with the accusative of the place that is pastured: Isa_30:23; Mic_7:14; Jer_6:3; Jer_1:19, etc. As their pasture shall the sheep graze over the ruins of Jerusalem, in so far as the inhabited city becomes a sheep walk. When Delitzsch thinks that no accusative object is to be supplied to רעו, but that the determination of the locality results from the context, it is seen that still there is a supplying of the object. One may as well supply the definite locality as object according to frequent usus loquendi, as imagine it from the context. The sense, in any case remains the same.—כֶּבֶשׂ found again only Isa_1:11; Isa_11:6, מִדְבָּר = דּבֶר the place whither flocks are driven, found again only Mic_2:12. מֵחִים found beside only Ps. 65:6, 15. גָּרִים are not גֵּרִים the strangers that are constant dwellers in the land, but as participle from גוּר, those en passant. The LXX translate ἄρνες. They may have read perhaps גדים(גְּדָיִם). This word, moreover, Schleussner, Hitzig, Ewald and others would restore. But we have shown above that an emphasis rests on the idea of a transitory stopping. גָּר in Isaiah again Isa_11:6; Isa_54:15. The plural חרבות occurs only here in the first part of Isaiah; but six times in the second part: Isa_44:26; Isa_49:19; Isa_51:3; Isa_52:9; Isa_58:12; Isa_61:4. The singular is found only Isa_64:10.
Isa_5:18. I take משׁך in its usual meaning in which it often occurs with the accusative (in Isaiah again only Isa_66:19, coll. Isa_13:22; Isa_18:2). חבלי חשׁוא are ropes of lies, for what binds them to sin, is the illusion that sin makes one happy. Hence every sin is a fraud (Heb_3:13). The expression further calls to mind Jon_2:9; Psa_31:7; and also חַבְלֵי חַטָּאָה Pro_5:22, and חַבְלֵי אָדָם Hos_11:4. Regarding the use of שָׁוְא in Isaiah, comp. Isa_1:13 (מנחת־שׁ׳). Isa_30:28 (נָפַת שׁ׳), Isa_59:4, (דַּבֶּר־שׁ׳). The word occurs only in these places in Isaiah. In כעבות the prefix בְּ is wanting according to the familiar rule; comp. Gesenius. § 118, Rem. עֲבוֹת (from עָבַת to twist, the twisting, twisted work, rope) Isaiah uses only here. Comp. Hos_11:4. עֲגָלָה, “a freight wagon.” found too Isa_28:27-28.
Isa_5:19. מהר and יחישׁ may be taken transitively and intransitively. I decide for the latter construction, 1) because מהר is used by Isaiah only intransitively (Isa_32:4; Isa_49:17; Isa_51:14; Isa_59:7), יחישׁ, that occurs twice beside here (Isa_28:16; Isa_60:22), is one of these times (Isa_28:16) used intransitively; 2) because in the parallel phrase ותקרב וגו׳ not Jehovah but עצת ק׳ is subject. The sense is any way in both instances the same. The forms יָחִישָׁה and תָּבֹאָה belong to the few instances of the voluntative ה appended to the third person, (comp. Psa_20:4, and the more doubtful cases Lev_21:5; Deu_33:16; Job_11:17; Job_22:21; Eze_23:20; Olshausen, § 228 b. Anm. [Green, § 97, 7). Let it be noticed moreover that this He so stands in two pairs of verbs, that each time it is only appended to the last word. It seems that each time it should avail as well for the first word. Comp. Isa_1:24 b.—עֵצָה is a current word with Isaiah that occurs thirteen times in the first part and five times in the second. On “the Holy One of Israel” see Isa_1:4.
Isa_5:20. שׂוּם with לְ following in the sense “to make into something;” Isa_13:9; Isa_23:13; Isa_25:2; Isa_41:15; Isa_42:15; Isa_49:11, etc.
Isa_5:21. On נגד פניהם comp. Hos_7:2; Lam_3:35; the expression does not again occur in Isaiah. נבון part. Isa_3:3; Isa_29:14.
Isa_5:22. מסך in Isaiah again Isa_19:14. מֶסֶךְ – מִמְסָךְ Isa_65:11. Hiph. הִצְדִּיק found again Isa_50:8; Isa_53:11. עֵקְב. only here. שֹׁחַד again Isa_1:23; Isa_33:15; Isa_45:13. Hiph. הֵסִיר frequent in the first part (Isa_1:16; Isa_1:25; Isa_3:1; Isa_3:18; Isa_5:5; Isa_5:23; Isa_10:13, etc), in the second part only in Isa_58:9. The singular suffix in ממנו must be construed distributively. The righteousness of the righteous they let disappear from him, i.e., from the righteous man in question. Comp., at Isa_2:8 and Isa_1:23.
Isa_5:24. As regards the construction; כאכל is a predicate infinitive dependent on a preposition, which is followed immediately, not as usually by the subject, but by the object, because the order כאכל לשון אֵשׁ קַשׁ offends against euphony; also in Isa_20:1, the object precedes, because it is a pronoun (אֹתוֹ). Commentators call attention to the multiplication of sibilants in the sentence. “One hears the crackling sparks, the sputtering flames” says Delitzsch. חֲשַׁשׁ occurs only once again in the Old Testament, Isa_33:11.—רָפָה is “to become lax, withered, weary, fall away” (especially of the hands Isa_13:7). לֶהָבָה is accus. loci.——The suffixes in שׁרשׁם and פרחם refer back to those whom the preceding four woes concern. To these then their punishment is announced. מַק only occurs again Isa_3:24. פֶּרַח (only Isa_18:5 again) is the blossom. אָבָק dust, only occurs again Isa_29:5.—The second clause of the verse calls to mind Isa_1:4. They were therefore the opposite of “the branch of Jehovah” Isa_4:2, and much rather comparable to the bad grape-vine, Isa_5:1 sqq. אִמְרָה occurs again Isa_28:23; Isa_29:4; Isa_32:9.
Isa_5:25. The expression חָרָה אַף does not occur again in Isaiah, and, excepting the part, Niph. Isa_41:11; Isa_45:24, no other form of the verb חרה occurs in Isaiah. Our expression, however, calls to mind, Num_11:33, “And the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His. people, and the Loan smote the people,” as all those numerous places in the Pentateuch, especially Num. where the expression וַיִּחַרּ אַף י׳ “and the anger of the Lord kindled,” etc., occurs (Exo_4:14; Num_11:1; Num_11:10; Num_12:9, etc.)—ויט ידו is also a reminiscence of the Pentateuch from Exo_8:2; Exo_8:13; Exo_10:22; Exo_14:21; Exo_14:27, where the expression is used of Aaron and Moses as they stretched out the hand to the performance of their miracles. In Isaiah, this expression is repeated in the same manner in Isa_23:11; Isa_31:3, coll. Isa_14:26-27.——רָגַז (Kal., in Isa_14:9; Isa_32:10-11; Isa_28:21; Isa_64:1), used of the trembling of the earth (Joe_2:10) or of the foundation of the mountains (Psa_18:8, coll. 2Sa_22:8). The expression that the carcass (נְבֵלָה occurs Isa_26:19) shall be as the sweepings (סוּחָה from סָחָה Eze_26:4, everrere, detergere = סְחִי Lam_3:45, “leavings, sweepings out;” α̈π.λεγ..), occurs only here. Elsewhere it is, that the נבלה shall be as dung in the field (Jer_9:21), shall be cast as a prey (Deu_28:26; Jer_7:33; Jer_16:4; Jer_19:7, etc.), to the wild beasts. The reading חֻצּוֹח (the London Polyglot has חוּצוֹת) is both etymologically incorrect, and also in conflict with every other place in which the word occurs in Isaiah (Isa_10:6; Isa_15:3; Isa_24:11; Isa_51:20.
Isa_5:26. מֵרָחוֹק does not belong to נָשָּׂא, but it has become an adjective conception and takes the place of an adjective, as may be seen from passages like Jer_23:23; Jer_31:10. The same is true of מִמֶּרְחָק that has the same meaning. The former word occurs in Isaiah twelve times; five times in the first and seven times in the second part (Isa_22:3; Isa_22:11; Isa_23:7; Isa_25:1; Isa_43:6; Isa_49:1; Isa_49:12; Isa_57:9; Isa_59:14; Isa_60:4; Isa_60:9). נֵס a signal set up on a high point; Isa_11:12; Isa_13:2; Isa_18:3; Isa_33:23; Isa_62:10. Only in the last named passage does the verb הֵרִים occur. שָׁרַק “to hiss, whistle,” is taken from the practice of bee keepers, as may be seen in Isa_7:18, where the same figure recurs. מקצה recurs Isa_13:5; Isa_13:10; Isa_43:6, thus equally in both parts. In each place, Isa_13:5 excepted, הארץ follows it. מְהֵרָה properly substantive—celeritas: recurs Isa_58:8; combined with קַל according to Joel 4:4. קַל recurs, in Isa_19:1; Isa_30:16; Isa_18:2. On the change of number in לֹו, comp., at Isa_5:23. The singular here apparently indicates that though the signal is given at various times and to different nations, still always, it shall be only one at a time, that they shall be summoned.
Isa_5:27. Drechsler justly calls attention to the perfect equilibrium in the structure of this Isa_5:27; in the first hemistich two clauses, each with two members of like arrangement; in the second hemistich two clauses, each with one member, the corresponding words in which rhyme together: שֹׁרוך–אזור ,נתק–כּתח עָיֵף .נעליו–חלציו recurs in Isa_28:12; Isa_29:8; Isa_32:2; Isa_46:1. On כָּשַׁל see at Isa_3:8. The Participle (Jer_46:16; Psa_105:37; 2Ch_28:15), occurs only here in Isaiah. נוּם recurs only Isa_56:10, יָשֵׁן only here in Isaiah. Niph. נפתח Isa_24:18; Isa_35:5; Isa_51:14.
Isa_5:28. צַר in the sense of “stone, flint” occurs only here and Isa_5:30, if this interpretation is allowable in the second case; it has then the same meaning as צֹר Eze_3:9; Exo_4:25; ????Exo_2:10; Exo_8:14, etc. Niph. נחשׁב like Isa_2:22; Isa_29:16-17; Isa_40:15.
Isa_5:29. לָבִיא (again in Isa_30:6) is by most held to mean lioness. Comp. Gesenius, Thes. p. 738 … On the construction of כַּלָּבִיא see at Isa_5:18.—ושׁאג is according to K’thibh וְשָׁאַג, according to K’ri יִשְׁאַג. The reading of K’ri is the correct one, for there is no reason for the perfect with the Vav consec., whereas the imperfect stands here, according to rule, to describe permanent qualities.—נָהַם only here in Isaiah, see Pro_28:15; Pro_19:12; Pro_20:2). Of פָלַט the form found here is the only one used by Isaiah, and that only here. The formula ואיז מציל occurs again Isa_42:22, and Isa_43:13, in which latter place it sounds the same as the original passage Deu_32:39.
Isa_5:30. The subject of ינהם, “he shall roar,” is the same that it has in the preceding verse. But we translate “it roars dull,” only to give prominence to the collective more than to the individual as indicated in כנהמת־ים “as the roaring of the sea.” The suffix, in עָלָיו can refer only to the one seized, i.e., Judah.—נהמה occurs only again Psa_38:9.—Drechsler, has justly called attention “to the sound painting produced by accumulating the buzzing and rumbling sound of m, and n, too,” in the first hemistich of this verse. Both sounds are in יִנְהֹם; to this word כַּיּוֹם rhymes; in כְּנַֽהֲמַת־יָם we find m. and n. again, and the syllable am twice.—To this hemistich, which I may say has itself a low rumble, the second is opposed, which portrays the conquered by its many, i. e, and a sounds, thus by thinner sounds, that in a measure paint weakness.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. The meaning of this section is twofold. First of all it contains a specification of the sour grapes, and a corresponding announcement of punishment. In this matter the Prophet begins with a certain selection. For he does not censure all sins, but only the sins of the eminent, and eminent sins. Thus six evil fruits are enumerated, and what the Prophet has to say with reference to each begins with a woe. But a detailed announcement of punishment follows on each of the first two woes only, after the description of the sinful condition with which they are concerned. For the following woes there follows an announcement of punishment common to all from Isa_5:24 on. This difference observed by the Prophet in regard to the order of his topics is connected with the second meaning of the passage: that is to say it contains at the same time the twofold conclusion of the second portal, i.e. of the whole discourse from chap. 2–5. For the announcement of punishment after the second woe, which is in proportion long extended through five verses (Isa_5:13-17), manifestly contains a relative ending: the wicked city sinks into the lower world, and the grass grows over its grave. These are manifestly, I may say, final chords. But in as much as the Prophet, Isa_5:15-16, reiterates verbatim the fundamental thought of his first illumination of the present, he gives us to understand that he would have this first (relative) conclusion refer to the first half of his discourse (chap. 2 and 3). And as he handles the following twice-two woes differently from the first two, he intimates that they have another purpose. They are not interrupted in their sequence by announcements of punishment coming between, but these follow after as common to all, Precisely by this concentration the Prophet gains a highly effective conclusion of the whole discourse, but which at the same time undeniably refers to the second lamp (chap. 4 and 5), just as we have seen that the first (relative) conclusion refers to the first lamp. One recognizes this from the comparison of Isa_5:24, drawn from vegetation, especially from the notions “root” and “scion,” in which the reference’ back to the צֶמַחbranch, chap. 4, as also to the vineyard and its fruit cannot be mistaken.
Thus this most artistically composed, ending is at the same time an image of the whole discourse, whose unity, comprising chaps, 2–5, here becomes most evident. As the twofold division forms the ground-work of the whole discourse, so it does of this conclusion. And this twofold division appears in the conclusion in a double form: first the simple two for the first (relative) conclusion; then the potent, doubled two for the great principal conclusion. From this we know, at the same time, why there must be six woes, and not seven, as one inclines to expect.
The first woe concerns the rich and mighty, that swallow up the property of inferior people, so that at last they possess the land alone (Isa_5:8). These are threatened that their houses shall be destroyed (Isa_5:9), and their ground shall become so sterile that ten acres shall yield only a bucketful of must, and a bushel of seed a peck [i.e. 1–16 of a German bushel.—Tr.] of fruits (Isa_5:10). The second woe pertains to high livers and gluttons, that begin early and leave off late (Isa_5:11), and who, amid the noise of music and the banquet, never come to regard Jehovah’s work (Isa_5:12). For this the people must wander into exile, and high rank and low rank shall perish of hunger and thirst (Isa_5:13), and be used only to be cast into the jaws of the insatiably greedy underworld (Isa_5:14). Then shall human pride be humbled (Isa_5:15), and the Lord, the righteous judge shall appear then as alone high in His righteousness and holiness (Isa_5:16), the waste places of the fallen grandees shall become the pastures of the flocks of alien tribes (Isa_5:17). The third woe is proclaimed against the insolent mockers that do evil with a very rage for it (Isa_5:18), and with blasphemous contempt, challenge the Lord, in whom they do not believe, to oppose His work to their own (Isa_5:19). The fourth woe strikes those who perversely call exactly that good which is bad, and that bad which is good (Isa_5:20). The fifth woe concerns the conceited that think they alone are wise (Isa_5:21). The sixth woe, finally, is proclaimed against the oppressors and unjust, who in order to live high, turn aside justice for a vile reward (Isa_5:22-23). The threatening, that those who have despised the law of Jehovah, shall be destroyed root and branch, corresponds to the last four woes in common (Isa_5:24). For this the people shall be smitten and their dead bodies be cast into the streets like sweepings. But that is not enough even (Isa_5:25). Foreign nations shall be brought from a distance against Israel (26). They shall vigorously and zealously accomplish the work to which they are called (27–29). Then like the roaring surges of the sea the enemy shall break over Israel. Israel shall see nothing on the earth but dark night: instead of a protection against rain and storm (Isa_4:6), a dark storm-cloud shall envelop the earth that shall turn aside the vivifying and warming light (Isa_5:30).
This is the result of the contemplation that the Prophet sets forth in regard to the (relative) present. Sad and gloomy as this result is, the realization of that glorious future which he holds in prospect (Isa_4:2-6) is not thereby hindered: on the contrary it postulates and prepares the way for that future. The words “in that day” point away to that.
2. Woe unto them—yield an epha.
Isa_5:8-16. On הֹוי comp. remarks at Isa_1:4. The Prophet first proclaims a woe against the rich and mighty, who with insatiable greed annex the houses and fields of their poor neighbors, so that these are crowded out of the land, and the country becomes the exclusive domain of these oppressors.
This accumulation of property violates both the statutes concerning the inheritance of real estate, and the year of Jubilee (Lev_25:10-13; Leviticus 25 sqq.). What the Prophet has heard is this; not merely some, but many houses, i.e. the houses, all that there are of them (Isa_2:3), shall be desolated, and the great and beautiful ones shall be without dwellers. This desolation of the houses is ascribed to the sterility that comes on the land as a punishment from God. For the Pentateuch threatens the disobedience of Israel with this punishment, and that in not a few passages: Lev_26:18-20; Deu_11:17; Deu_28:17 sq., 23 sq., 38 sqq. How great the barrenness shall be may be determined from the fact, that ten acres of vine land will only yield a bucket of wine, and a bushel of seed only the tenth part as much fruit.—צֶמֶד is a pair of beasts of burden bound by a yoke (Jdg_19:10; 1Sa_11:7; Isa_21:7; Isa_21:9), then a piece of ground as great as such a צמד could plow up in a day. If a vineyard is not plowed it might still be measured by the acre. How large a surface a צמד might be according to our measures, has never yet been made out. Comp. Unterss. über die Längen-Feld-und Wege Masse, insbesondere der Greich en und der luden von L. Fenner v. Fenneberg,Berlin, 1859, p. 96.
בַּתa bath (comp. at בָּתָה Isa_5:6) is the principal measure for fluids, like the ephah for dry measure. Both are the tenth part of a homer or כּוֹר, cor. (Eze_45:11; Eze_45:14), בת occurs only here in Isa. חֹמֶרhomer, (probably the burden of a חֲֹמר, an ass., whence Jdg_15:16; 1Sa_16:2חֲמוֹר stands directly for חֹמֶר) does not again occur in Isa. in this sense. Also אֵיפָה “an ephah” is only here in Isa. There is still great uncertainty regarding the relation of these measures to those used by us. If Thenius (The ancient Hebrew long and hollow measures, Studien und Krit., 1846, Heft. 1 and 2) is correct, who sets the contents of the homer at 10143.9 Paris cubic inches, then this would about correspond to the burden an ass can bear.
3. Woe unto them that rise up early—shall strangers eat.
Isa_5:11-17. The second woe, the longest and most detailed, is directed against the high livers and gluttons. They rise early so as to go soon to drinking; they remain long sitting of evenings so as to inflame themselves with wine. “Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning! Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is a noble, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for drunkenness!” Ecc_10:16-17; Comp. Isa_22:13; Isa_56:12; Amo_6:3 sqq. The Romans called feasts that began before the usual time (i. e. in the ninth hour) tempestiva convivia., seasonable feasts (Cic. de Senect. 14, &c.). Ab octava hora bibere was accounted debauchery (Juven. 1, 49, comp. Gesenius on our ver.). שֵׁכָר is the artificial wine, and יַיִן the natural. The first was prepared partly from dates, apples, pomegranates (Son_8:2), honey, barley, (ζῦθος, οῖ̓νος κρίθινος, Her. 2, 77), partly by mixture (like our punch, hence מְֹסךְ שֵׁכָר to mingle drink Isa_5:22); Comp. Herzog’sR. Encycl. XVII. p. 615. In general comp. Isa_24:9; Isa_28:7; Isa_29:9; Isa_56:12.
The inflaming caused by wine is physical and psychical; (the former was by the ancients referred to the hepar and oculi, the liver and the eyes); comp. Pro_23:29 sq.
But to a jovial banquet belongs music. There does not fail כִּנּוֹר (the harp, i. e. a stringed instrument, with strings resting free and plumb on the sounding board, comp. Isa_16:11; Isa_23:16; Isa_24:8; Isa_30:32), נֶבֶל (i.e., every stringed instrument, whose strings are stretched over a bag-shaped sounding board by means of a bridge, for נֶבֶל is properly the bag.—comp. Isa_14:11; Isa_22:24), תֹּף (the hand drum, the tambourine, Isa_24:8; Isa_30:32), and חָלִיל (the flute, literally bored out, hollow, Isa_30:29). Comp. Herzog’sR. Encycl. X. p. 126 sqq. If now it is added, “and wine” is their drink, it is to prevent one from thinking that Isa_5:12 a indicates a different situation from that of Isa_5:11; rather the identity of both is expressly made prominent.
While nothing is wanting to the scene as regards worldly pleasure and joy, there is the most serious poverty in regard to spiritual life. In this respect they are as if blind and dead; the revelations of God that are written both in the book of nature and in history, they do not in any way regard. The greatest misery ever known to antiquity was destined to follow this luxury, and debauchery that wickedly forgot the one thing needful; the wandering into exile. One may see from Lamentations 5, how distressingly it went with such a herd of humanity, driven away as they were like cattle. Because the nation had not regarded what would promote its peace, it must go out “unawares,” מבלי דעת. In this is signified both: without insight, and unawares. The word designates the subjective state that was portrayed Isa_5:12 b, and at the same time the manner in which the objective divine judgment should break over them. מבלי דעה is only found here. But in Hos_4:6, which comp. מִבְּלִי הַדַּעַת is found in a connection similar to this. Every where beside it reads בִּבְלִי ד׳ (Deu_4:42; Deu_19:4; Jos_20:3; Job_36:12). מִך here is not causative, but negative = without. [Lowth, Barnes and J. A. Alexander retain the meaning of the Eng. Vers.: “for want of knowledge.”—Tr.]
The honored, the nobility of the people (כָּבוֹדabstr. pro concr. comp. Isa_4:5; Isa_16:14; Isa_17:3; Isa_60:13; Isa_66:12;) shall become starvelings, and the great crowd (הָמוֹןnoise, then what makes noise, the great crowd Isa_17:12; Isa_29:5-8,) shall pant with thirst. Many, like Gesenius, would take הָמוֹן to mean the rich, because the word occurs in the sense of “riches, treasures” (Isa_60:5; Jer_3:23). But the Prophet announces the judgment to the entire people (comp. עַמִּי in the beginning of the verse): according to which it is quite suitable for him to divide the totality into nobility and common people. When death has rich harvest on the earth, then the underworld must open its gates wide to receive the sacrifice. According to that then לָכֵןtherefore, Isa_5:14 stands to the לכן Isa_5:13, not in a co-ordinate but in a subordinate relation. A soul is ascribed to Sheol (the word is with few exceptions, e. g.Job_26:6, feminine). It is therefore personified. The notion “soul” is at the same time used in the meaning of “desire, greed,” a usage that is not infrequent in the O. Test., as is well known. Thus it is used, e. g., Deu_23:25, “When thou comest into thy neighbor’s vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes כְּנַפְּשְׁךָ שָׂבְעֶֽךָ“ Comp. Pro_23:2בַּעַל נֶפֶשׁ a greedy person; פלָבַים עַזּיֵ־נֶפֶשׁIsa_56:11, dogs strong in greediness; comp. Psa_27:12. The same expression as in our passage is found in Hab_2:5. The insatiable nature of the underworld is declared also Pro_27:20; Pro_30:16.
Sheol (in Isa. again Isa_14:9; Isa_14:11; Isa_14:15; Isa_28:15; Isa_28:18; Isa_38:10; Isa_38:18; Isa_57:9), according to the O. Test. representation, is the resting-place of departed souls, corresponding to the Hades of the Greeks, which is conceived of as in the inward part of the earth (hence שְׁאִוֹל תַּחְתּיתthe lowest hell, Deu_32:22; Psa_86:13, coll.Psa_88:7; Lam_3:55; Isa_44:23; Eze_26:20; Eze_32:18; Eze_32:24), because, naturally, the kingdom of death must be conceived of as in the opposite direction from the kingdom of life. When, therefore, God, the Lord of light, has His seat in light which envelops us from above, then must the kingdom of death be sought under us in the dark depths of the earth.
There are three views regarding the derivation of the word שְׁאוֹל: 1) the older, according to which the word should be derived from שָׁאַל, to demand. The underworld was called “the demanding, the summons,” in accordance with its insatiableness (comp. the passages cited above); and because it will only receive and never gives; 2) Gesenius, and at the same time with him, though quite independently, Böttcher, Ewald, Maurer (comp. Thesaur. p. 1348) maintain that שְׁאוֹל is softened from שְׁעוֹל. But שָׁעַל, which never occurs, must, according to שֹׁעַל the hollow hand, שׁוּעָל the excavator, inhabitant of caves, the fox, מִשְׁעוֹל (Num_22:24) the hollow way, have the meaning of being hollow. Sheol would, then, be “the cavern.” 3) Hupfeld, Œhler, Delitzsch, refer the word back to the root ,שׁל שׁול, which is the root of שָׁעַל itself, and has the meaning of “hanging down loose, sinking down,” so that Sheol would be “the sinking, going down deep.” The matter is still undetermined. If it is opposed to the first explanation that, according to it, a poetic epithet is made the chief name of the kingdom of the dead (comp. Œhler in Herzog’sR. Encycl. XXI. p. 412); so, too, both the other views must make it comprehensible how an א comes to take the place of the middle radical.
All the glory of Jerusalem descends into the wide gaping throat of hell, הָמוֹן means the crowd here too (as in Isa_5:13), but as there is here no contrast with the honored ones as there, but only the notion of superabundance, of multitude, of tumult is added to that of glory, I allow myself with Drechsler to translate “riot and revel.” שָׁאוֹןstrepitus, noise, is used of the roar of water (Isa_17:12-13), and of a multitude of men (Isa_13:4; Isa_24:8; Isa_25:5; Isa_66:6). The three substantives designate everything that is splendid and makes a noise, be it person or thing. עָלֵז (ᾶπ. λεγ.), too, before which אֲשֶׁר is to be supplied, does not seem to exclude reference to things. For why should not the music and all that pertains to a banquet (Isa_5:12) be called jovial? Comp. Psa_96:12.
In as much as the Prophet in Isa_5:15-16 partly repeats verbatim the fundamental thoughts of the first half of this discourse, that we have called the first prophetic lamp (comp. Isa_2:9; Isa_2:11; Isa_2:17), he intimates that the two parts belong to one another. Those false eminences illumined by the first lamp, and the false fruits of which the second treats, lead to the same end: to the humiliation of the wickedly insolent men, and to the proof that the holy and just God is alone high. But why the Prophet just at this point casts back this connecting look, is explained in the fact that here we stand at a point of relative conclusion. This we recognize, as was shown above, partly from the contents of this second woe, which sounds like a finale, partly from the form, for the following woes have a very different structure from this first. But notice with what art the Prophet leads over to the theme of the first lamp, and thus unites the fundamental thought of both lamps. By the description of the destruction of the wicked multitude by hunger and thirst, he comes quite naturally on the idea of their sinking down into the underworld. Therewith he has touched the deepest point of antagonism which human enmity against God can attain. For it goes no deeper down than the jaws of Sheol. This mention of the deepest deep reminds him that therewith, what he had said above on the abasement of human pride, appears in a new light. That is to say it appears, by what is threatened in Isa_5:14, to be absolute. Precisely thereby the highness of the Lord appears in its fullest light. For He that is able to cast down into the lowest deep must for His own part necessarily be the highest. But He is so as the holy one that judges righteously. Now if the highness of God calls to mind the first lamp, His holiness calls to mind the second (comp. the sacred and sanctifying Branch of God, Isa_4:2-3). And thus the fundamental thoughts of the first and second lamp combine most beautifully.
The first half of Isa_5:15 is repeated verbatim from Isa_2:9 a. The second half of Isa_5:15 is, with some abbreviation, taken from Isa_2:11 coll. Isa_5:17. מַשְׁפָּט is the judicial act (comp. Isa_1:21); in so far as it is a realization of the idea of righteousness, God at the same time proves Himself to be holy (comp. Eze_20:41; Eze_28:22; Eze_28:25; Eze_36:23; Eze_38:16; Eze_38:23). For holiness and righteousness belong together like lamps and burning (Isa_5:17). The Prophet concludes his mournful picture of the future in a highly poetic manner, in that on the site of the once glorious and joyous city, now sunk into the ground (Isa_5:11-12), he presents a pasture in which wandering nomads are feeding their flocks. Comp. the quite similar pictures of future change of fortune, Isa_7:21-25; Isa_17:2; Isa_32:13 sq.; Zep_2:14 sq. Commentators have justly pointed out that the present condition of Jerusalem and Palestine may be regarded as a part of the fulfilment of this prophecy. For the ancient city is as if sunk into the ground. A depth of rubbish covers the old streets and open places, and above them new ones are laid out in totally different directions. Only laborious excavations can give a correct picture of the topography of ancient Jerusalem. The land, however, is almost every where become pastures for nomadic Arabian tribes. And when, moreover, one reflects that a foreign people, of another faith and inimical to the Jews, has for a long time reigned in Palestine, it must be confessed that the present time corresponds very exactly to this announcement of the Prophet. Yet it must not be overlooked that the circumstances mentioned only touch the outward side of the fulfilment. It cannot be doubted that Isa_5:14 has been fulfilled also in a deeper, more inward, and, I may say, transcendental way. For what has become of the land we know. But had not the Prophet also a thought of the immortal souls of men?
The חרבות מחים are the ruins that once belonged to the fat and rich, and were then the opposite of mournful, waste wrecks, that is to say, places of splendor and prosperity. Strangers shall devour the products of these wastes, i. e. the grass growing there, that is use it for their cattle. By this is implied that the places shall lie unnoticed and without owners. Only stranger, nomadic shepherds, in passing along, will stop there with their flocks.
4. Woe unto them—may know it.
Isa_5:18-19. The third woe is directed against audacious sinners who make unbelief in God’s punitive justice the foundation of their wicked doings. The fact that the Prophet represents these people as impiously bringing down the divine judgment on themselves, has caused many commentators to construe מָשַׁךְ in the sense of “attrahere, draw toward,” and עָוֹן in the sense of “guilt” (Ewald, Umbreit), or “punishment of sin” (Gesenius, Knobel, and others). But if the Prophet meant to say this, and to express that those had drawn on themselves by deeds what they had invoked by words, i. e. the judgments of God, he would certainly have employed expressions that would more exactly correspond to the notions מעשׁה י׳ and עצת קדושׁ י׳, thus words that mean directly “punishment, judgment, destruction, ruin.” I do not deny that under some circumstances the words עָוֹן and חטאה may be taken in a sense bordering very nearly on “guilt of sin, and punishment of sin” (comp. the passages cited by Knobel,Gen_4:13; Gen_19:15; Psa_31:11; Zec_14:19; Pro_21:4; to which, also, I would add Isa_27:9, where these words in the parallelism correspond to one another. See at the place). But, in the present instance, precisely the choice of these words proves to me that the Prophet did not think of the identity of the fruits of those doings with the display of the divine justice, but only of a causal relation between those doings and the divine justice. They sin away so boldly, precisely because they believe there is no danger of a day of vengeance. The idea of “boldly sinning away” the Prophet expresses in his vigorous style, in that he compares those wicked men to draught horses, that drag a heavy wagon by means of stout ropes. Like these beasts lay themselves to the traces with all their might in order to start the load, so these lay themselves out to sin with all their might. They pull with might and main, they surrender themselves to sin with a diligence and expenditure of power worthy of a better cause.
That say,etc.
Isa_5:19. What chains them so fast to sin, and makes them so zealous in its service, is just that they do not believe in the divine announcement of a day of retribution. They express their unbelief in a contemptuous challenge to Jehovah to expedite His work, i. e. His work of judgment and punishment, to fulfil His purpose of retribution. They wish for an early coming of this manifestation of judgment. For they would like to experience it. They dare so much. They are not afraid of it, though it were true; but they do not believe it is true. With impious irony they even call Him, in whose display of justice they do not believe, by His title; the Holy One of Israel. They would have it understood thereby, that He is so called, it is true, but He is not this. Comp. Isa_28:15; Jer_5:12 sq.; Jer_17:15; Eze_12:22.
5. Woe unto them—the righteous from him.
Isa_5:20-23. That Isa_5:20 does not speak merely of perversion of justice, as some would have it, appears from the generality of its expressions, and from Isa_5:23. This perversion of the world whereby exactly bad is good, and good bad, is Satanic. For if the devil became God, as he attempts to become (2Th_2:4), it would happen thus. But evil has in the physical domain, its correlate in darkness and bitterness, as good has in light and sweetness. For what darkness and bitterness are for the body, such is evil for the spirit, and what light and sweetness are for the body, such is good for the spirit. Thus, Psa_19:9, the commandment of the Lord is clear as light, and Isa_5:11, sweeter than honey and the honey comb. But bitter appears in many places as the symbol of evil: Num_5:18 sq.; Deu_32:32 sq.; Jer_2:19; Act_8:23; Heb_12:15. That to the bad it is just bad that tastes good, we read Job_20:12; Pro_5:3-4.
Isa_5:21. The Prophet pronounces the fifth woe against the proud self-deification, to which divine wisdom counts for nothing, but its own for everything. Comp. Pro_3:7; Jer_8:8 sq.; Jer_9:22 sq. The sixth woe, finally, Isa_5:22-23, strikes the unjust and oppressors, who sell justice in order to obtain the means for enjoying a dissolute life. מסן שׁכר, mixing of drink, comp. on Isa_5:11. It is debatable whether the Hebrews were acquainted with wines prepared with spices. Hitzig, Hendewerk, Delitzsch, maintain that proof that they did is wanting, and take מסן שׁ׳ = temperare aqua, to mix with water, in which sense the later Jews use מָזַנ. According to Buxtorf, this word means: “miscuit, temperavit vinum affusa aqua” whence it is used directly for “infundere, to pour into.” Comp. מֶזֶנSon_7:3. On the other hand Gesenius (with whom under the word מזגHitzig had agreed) see word מסך, Winer (R. W. s. v. Wein, Drechsler, Knobel, Leyrer (in R. Encyl. xvii. p. 616) maintain most decidedly that the Hebrews were acquainted with spiced wines. Winer and Leyer dispute even that the use of vinum aqua temperare among the Jews can be certainly proved. These scholars named cite Pro_9:2; Pro_9:5 in proof of the existence among the ancients of spiced wine (which is to be distinguished from that prepared from fruit, honey, barley), in which passage the מסך that is simultaneous with the killing, must point to another mixing, than that with water, which latter must be coincident with the pouring out. They further cite a passage in Mischna Maaser scheni 2, 1 (non condiunt oleum … sed condiunt vinum; si inciderit in id mel et condimenta, unde melius reddatur, illa in melius confectio fit juxta computum;) and also Plin. Hist. nat. 14:13, 14, 15 19 where he speaks of vinum aromatites, myrrhinum, absynthites, etc.; and further to the New Testament expressions οἴνος ἐσμυρμισμένοςMar_15:23, κεκερασμένον ἄκρατονRev_14:10; and to a passage in Dioscor. 5, 64 sq. According to these evidences I do not see how it can be doubted that the Hebrews were acquainted with spiced wines.
6. Therefore as—stretched out still.
Isa_5:24-25. On the fourfold woe of Isa_5:18-23, now follows the announcement of the punishment to be shared in common. It is joined on by לָכֵן like Isa_5:13. The people are compared to stubble and hay, who, according to Isa_4:2, ought to be a flourishing divine branch. And quick as stubble is devoured by fire or hay disappears in the flames, shall their root decay and their bloom pass away like dust. Thus here too Israel is again represented as a plant, a figure that reminds us strongly of Isa_4:2 sqq., consequently of the second prophetic lamp. Hay and stubble are very inflammable stuff. But those roots and blossoms, that ought, properly to be fresh and full of sap, shall fly away, dissolved as they are in dust and decay, as easily as hay and stubble are devoured by the flames.
The threatening of Isa_5:24, as appears from the suffixes, concerns immediately those against whom the preceding four woes were proclaimed. But as Isa_5:13, the banishment of the entire nation is represented as the consequence of the sins of those greedy and riotous men, so here it is shown how the waves of destruction shall roll on to the utmost periphery, and thus seize the whole people. I refer על־כן “therefore,” not merely to the second clause, but to the whole of Isa_5:24. Although all the verbal forms in 25a, point to the past, the things themselves that they declare fall in the future. This is evident from (Isa_5:24) the relation of the announcement of punishment to the sin, which is indicated as present (Isa_5:18 sqq.), and from the parallel between the threatenings of Isa_5:9 sq, and Isa_5:13 sq.—Comp. Drechsler,in loc.—But it were not impossible that Isaiah employs here the past forms, because facts of the past float before his mind, that were to be regarded, too, as proofs of the wrath portrayed in Isa_5:25, without, however, representing the entire fulfilment of the threatening. If, then, as to its chief import Isa_5:25 has respect to the future, and, in contrast with the blows to be expected from a distant people (Isa_5:26 sqq.), indicates the blows to be expected out of the midst of Judah herself, or from the immediate neighborhood, then there might be a reference in “the hills did tremble” to the earthquake in Uzziah’s time (Amo_1:1; Zec_14:5), and in “their carcases,” etc., a reference to those 120,000 men of Judah, that Pekah, the king of Israel slew in one day; 2Ch_28:6. The formula, “for all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still,” (Isa_9:11; Isa_9:16; Isa_9:20; Isa_10:4), expresses the thought that something still greater is coming. Thus then this formula introduces the chief conclusion of the discourse which corresponds to that relative conclusion, Isa_5:13-17. For if foreign nations from a great distance are called to accomplish a judgment, it is to be expected in advance that this judgment shall be decisive, and of mighty consequence. In fact, too, it was ever nations from a distance that destroyed the respublica Israelitarum. Call to mind the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans. And those that came the farthest, did the work of destruction the most effectually.
7. And He will lift up,—deliver it.
Isa_5:26-29. The whole description is general, and not special. That is, it is not a single, particular nation, but only the genus of foreign, distant nations in general that is described. The prophecy, therefore, finds its fulfilment in all the catastrophes that brought foreign powers against Israel, from the Assyrians to the Romans. Evidently Isaiah has in mind the fundamental prophecy Deu_28:49 sqq., from which the expression גוֹיִם מֵרָחוֹק, “nations from afar,” is taken verbatim, and of which also the וְנָשָׂא, “and He shall lift up,” reminds one. It is remarkable that after the arrival of those Babylonian ambassadors, 2Ki_20:14, Hezekiah should himself apply our passage, and so give testimony to its fulfilment, in that, when asked by the Prophet, whence these people came, he replied, “They are come from a far country (מֵאֶרֶץ רְחוֹקָה), from Babylon.” The description that now follows in Isa_5:27-29, of the enemy that is summoned, is not of any individual enemy, in fact is not at all historical, but generic and ideal in character. For, in reality, there is no army, where no one grows tired nor stumbles, in which no one sleeps nor slumbers, etc. The Prophet would only express in poetic form, the greatest activity, unweariedness, and readiness for conflict. There is a similar description Jer_5:15 sqq. Their eagerness for battle, and their zeal for the cause is so great that they neither slumber, nor sleep. The girdle (Isa_11:5; Jer_13:11), that binds the garment about the hips (Isa_11:5; Isa_32:11 : coll. Isa_3:22) does not get loose on anyone; no one breaks (Isa_33:20; Isa_58:6, Pi.), the strings (only here in Isaiah, comp. Gen_14:23), by which the sandals (Isa_11:15; Isa_20:2) are fastened to the feet.
Isa_5:28. The equipment of the enemy, too, is admirable. The arrows are sharp; the bows are bent, (an ideal trait, for in reality bows could not be ever bent, that is, trod on with the foot, Isa_21:15). The hoofs (only here in Isaiah), of the steeds are hard as stone. As the ancients did not understand shoeing horses, hard hoofs were an important requisite in a war horse, comp. Mic_4:13, and χαλκόπους, κρατερῶνυξ. The impetuous, thundering roll of their wheels makes them resemble a tempest. The same figure recurs Isa_66:15. Comp, beside Isa_17:13; Isa_21:1; Isa_29:6.
The 29th verse finally describes the attack and victory of the enemy. The discourse which, to this point, has had almost a regular beat, and progressed, one might say, with a martial step, now becomes irregular and bounding. With mighty impetuosity that reveals itself in a battle cry that is compared to the roaring of a lion, the enemy attacks. It is strange that the Prophet expresses this thought doubly. But this doubled expression has apparently only a rhetorical aim. If we take into account the comparison of deep growling, we receive the impression that the Prophet would indicate that the enemy has at command every modulation of the lion’s voice. The moment the lion seizes his prey, he ceases to roar, and one hears only deep growling. The seized prey he saves for himself: i.e., he bears it away out of the tumult. כְּפִיר (recurs only Isa_11:6), is the young lion no longer sucking but become independent of its dam. גּוּר is the sucking lion. The plural is used here, probably, on purpose to make prominent the numbers in contrast with לָבִיא.
8. And in that day—the heavens thereof.
Isa_5:30. The Prophet hastens to the conclusion. For this purpose he comprehends all that he has still to say in one figure drawn with a few, yet strong traits. It is also a proof of the great rhetorical art of the Prophet, that he does not name Judah. He rather allows to be guessed what was painful to him to say. For we need not refer the words only to what immediately precedes, as if it were declared that what is described Isa_5:30, happens on the same day as that of which Isa_5:29 speaks. For that is to be understood of course. But this “in that day” refers back to Isa_2:11; Isa_2:17; Isa_2:20; Isa_3:7; Isa_3:18; Isa_4:1 and to Isa_4:2, so that hereby is intimated that this prophecy too, shall be fulfilled in the “last days.” And as Isa_4:2 speaks of a day of great happiness, the passage previously named, however, of a day of dreadful judgment, so the Prophet refers back to both, meaning to intimate that when these final dreadful visitations of the last time shall have come upon Israel, then shall come the daybreak of salvation. I see therefore in this phrase “in that day” a fresh proof of the connection of chap. 5, with the preceding chapters 2, 4. Like surges of the sea, therefore, raging and roaring, shall the enemy fall on Judah in that day? Delitzsch appropriately refers to Sierra-Leone because, “those that first landed there, mistook the noise of the surf breaking on the precipitous shore for the roar of lions.” The subject of ונבט (Niph. ἅπ. λεγ .), is evidently Judah. But the further meaning of these words presents great difficulties. I think two passages shed light on this one. The first is cited by all commentators, viz. 8:42. When we read there: “And He looks to the earth and behold trouble and darkness,” (צָרָה וַֽחֲשֵׁכָה) we are justified in taking חשׁז צר in our passage together; either צַר as adjective (compressed, thick darkness, חשֶׁךְ is masc.), or as apposition (Vitringa, Hendewerk), or as genitive (darkness of anguish). According to that we must separate, then, צַר from וָאוֹר, a union for which there is no other authority than the (for us not binding) Masoretic tradition, and then we must read וְאוֹר. For this reading, however, we have the support of another passage, which, so far as I know, has never hitherto been adduced by any expositor for the elucidation of our verse, viz.:Job_18:6. There we read חַשַׁךְ כְּאָֽהֳלוֹ “the light shall be dark in his tent.” That passage speaks of the wicked whose light goes out, and whose fire burns no longer, in whose tent, therefore, it is dark. Can then the coming together of these words אור חשׁן be accidental? I am the less inclined to believe this, as the thought, that the light itself becomes dark, and not the lighted room, is a very specific one. Something similar may be found Isa_13:10; Eze_32:8; Joel 4:15.—עֲרִיפִים is ἃπ. λεγ. It is derived from ערף “to drop down,” which occurs only Deu_32:2; Deu_33:28. עֲרָפֶל appears to be kindred to it. As עֲרָפֶל originates from עָרָפ by the addition of the letter ל like כַּרְמֶל from כֶּרֶם and בַּרְזֶל from בָּרַז (Chald.,fixit, transfixit) see Green § 193, 2 c, and as עֲרָפֶל very often joined to עָנָן (Deu_4:11; Deu_5:19; Joe_2:2; Zep_1:15; Eze_34:12) undoubtedly means the cloudy obscurity, the thick clouds, so עריפים can be nothing else than the rain clouds out of which the rain drops down.
This rain cloud is now regarded as the tent covering of the earth, or at least as belonging to it, like e. g., Isa_40:22 it says: “that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in,” (comp. Job_36:29; Psa_104:2 sqq.). The expression “in his tent” would not be suitable. For the light that illumines a tent, stands within under the tent cover. But the light that illumines the earth, is above and beyond the heavenly tent cover. If, then, it is to be dark on earth, the light must be hindered from penetrating down from above. Therefore I translate: “and the light becomes dark through its clouds.” The fem., suffix is therefore to be referred to אֶרֶץ, “earth.” It will not do to refer it to אור. as Gesenius does, referring to Job_36:32 (Thes. p. 1072), because then it must read חָשְׁכָה. If one would, with Hitzig, make אוֹר dependent on נִבַּט,. then the expression is surprising. For the opposite of “earth” is not “the light,” but “the heaven.” The explanations “distress and light” (Delitzsch), and “stone and gleam” (i. e., hail and lightning, Drechsler) seem to me to pay too little regard to the two parallel passages quoted. I would, moreover, call attention to the fact that in this אזר חשׁן there lies, too, a significant reference to the doings of the people who, according to Isa_5:20 “make darkness light and light darkness.” Because they do that, their light shall be darkened wholly and permanently. And at the same time we find here a remarkable antithesis to Isa_4:5. 6. There God creates upon Mount Zion a cloud by day and flaming fire by night, for a shade by day against the heat, and for shelter against rain and storm. Here darkness of anguish shall cover the earth and the rain-clouds shall not only overwhelm the unprotected earth with their showers, but beside these keep back the light, therefore, in a sense, be a shelter before the light. Thus this chapter, which had apparently begun so joyously, ends in deepest night and gloom. One feels that the discourse of the Prophet has exhausted itself. We are at the end. Nothing can follow these mighty, and at the same time vain words but—silence. But the informed know well that the two prophetic lamps that are thrust out before (Isa_2:1-4 and Isa_4:2-6) stretch out beyond this period of misfortune. When, then, Isa_5:30, it reads “in that day,” we know that this is a hint that refers back out of the midnight gloom of this conclusion to the comforting beginning Isa_4:2. That very day, when the evil fruits of the vineyard sink away in night and horror, begins for the “Branch of Jehovah” the day of light, and of eternal glory.
Footnotes:
[11]Heb. ye.
[12]Or, This is in mine ears, saith the Lord, etc.
[13]Heb. If not.
[14]Or, pursue them.
[15]And have the harp, etc.
[16]And wine as beverage.
[17]unawares.
[18]Heb. their glory are, men of famine.
[19]starvelings.
[20]her greed.
[21]see at Isa_2:9.
[22]Or, the holy God.
[23]Heb. the God the holy,
[24]as if it were their pasture.
[25]Heb. that say concerning evil, It is good, &c.
[26]Heb. before their own face.
[27]Heb. the tongue of fire.
[28]hay.
[29]Or, as dung.
[30]as sweepings
[31]he comes.
[32]lioness.
[33]deep growl.
[34]he and him.
[35]Or, distress.
[36]Or, When it is light, it shall be dark in the destructions thereof.
[37]through its clouds.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. On Isa_2:2. Domus Dei, etc. “The house of God is built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, who, themselves, too, are mountains, quasi imitators of Christ. (They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, Psa_125:1) Whence, also, upon one of the mountains Christ founded the Church and said: Thou art Peter, etc., Mat_16:18.” Jerome.——“We can understand Jerusalem by the mountain of God, for we see how the believing run thither, and how those that have accepted the testimony come thither and seize the blessing that proceeds thence. But we may also by the house of God understand the churches spread over land and sea, as we believe St. Paul, who says, ‘we are the house of God,’ Heb_3:6. And so we may recognize the truth of the prophecy. For the Church of God stands shining forth, and the nations, forsaking wickedness that has long had dominion over them, hasten to her and are enlightened by her.” Theodoret.——Ecclesia est, etc. “The church is a mountain exalted and established above all other mountains, but in spirit. For if you regard the external look of the church from the beginning of the world, then in New Testament times, you will see it oppressed, contemned, and in despair. Yet, notwithstanding, in that contempt it is exalted above all mountains. For all kingdoms and all dominions that have ever been in the world have perished. The church alone endures and triumphs over heresies, tyrants, Satan, sin, death and hell, and that by the word only, by this despised and feeble speech alone. Moreover it is a great comfort that the bodily place, whence first the spiritual kingdom should arise, was so expressly predicted, that consciences are assured of that being the true word, that began first to be preached in that corner of Judea, that it may be for us a mount Zion, or rule for judging of all religions and all doctrines. The Turkish Alcoran did not begin in Zion—therefore it is wicked doctrine. The various Popish rites, laws, traditions began not in Zion—therefore they are wicked, and the very doctrines of devils. So we may hold ourselves upright against all other religions, and comfort our hearts with this being the only true religion which we profess. Therefore, too, in two psalms, Psalms 2, 110, mount Zion is expressly signified: “I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion;” likewise: “The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion.” Luther.
2. On Isa_2:2. Luther makes emphatic, as something pertaining to “the wonderful nature of this kingdom,” that “other kingdoms are established and administered by force and arms. But here, because the mountain is lifted up, the nation shall flow (fluent), i.e., they shall come voluntarily, attracted by the virtues of the church. For what is there sweeter or lovelier than the preaching of the gospel? Whereas Moses frightens weak souls away. Thus the prophet by the word fluent, “flow,” has inlaid a silent description of the kingdom of Christ, which Christ gives more amply when He says: Mat_11:12, “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force,” i.e. “they are not compelled, but they compel themselves.” “Morever rivers do not flow up mountains, but down them; but here is such an unheard-of thing in the kingdom of Christ.”—Starke.
3. Luther remarks on “and shall say: come,” etc. “Here thou seest the worship, works and efforts and sacrifices of Christians. For they do only the one work, that they go to hear and to learn. All the rest of the members must serve their neighbors. These two, ears and heart, must serve God only. For the kingdom rests on the word alone. Sectaries and heretics, when they have heard the gospel once, instantly become masters, and pervert the Prophet’s word, in that they say: Come let us go up that we may teach him his way and walk in our paths. They despise, therefore, the word as a familiar thing and seek new disputations by which they may display their spirit and commend themselves to the crowd. But Christians know that the words of the Holy Ghost can never be perfectly learned as long as we are in the flesh. For Christianity does not consist in knowing, but in the disposition. This disposition can never perfectly believe the word on account of the weakness of the sinful flesh. Hence they ever remain disciples and ruminate the word, in order that the heart, from time to time, may flame up anew. It is all over with us if we do not continue in the constant use of the word, in order to oppose it to Satan in temptation (Matthew 4). For immediately after sinning ensues an evil conscience, that can be raised up by nothing but the word. Others that forsake the word sink gradually from one sin into another, until they are ruined. Therefore Christianity must be held to consist in hearing the word, and those that are overcome by temptations, whether of the heart or body, may know that their hearts are empty of the word.”
4. Vitringa remarks on the words, “Out of Zion goes forth the law,” Isa_5:3. “If strife springs up among the disciples concerning doctrine or discipline, one must return to the pattern of the doctrine and discipline of the school at Jerusalem. For יָצָא “shall go forth,” stands here only as in Luk_2:1, “There went forth a decree from Cæsar Augustus.” In this sense, too, Paul says, 1Co_14:36, “What? came the word of God out from you?” The word of God did not go forth from Corinth, Athens, Rome, Ephesus, but from Jerusalem, a fact that bishops assembled in Antioch opposed to Julius I. (Sozom. hist. eccl. III. 8, “the orientals acknowledged that the Church of Rome was entitled to universal honor—although those who first propagated a knowledge of Christian doctrine in that city came from the East”). Cyril took יָצָא in the false sense of κατελἐλοιπε τὴν Σιών, “has forsaken Zion.” When the Lord opened the understandings of the disciples at Emmaus, to understand the Scriptures and see in the events they had experienced the fulfilment of what was written concerning Him in the law, Prophets and Psalms, He cannot have forgotten the present passage. Of this we may be the more assured since the words: “Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem.” Luk_24:46-47, point clearly to Isa_2:2-3 of our passage. Therefore too, Justin Martyr Apol. i. (commonly ii.), § 49, says: “But where the prophetic spirit predicts the future, he says: from Zion shall go forth the law, etc. And that this finally came to pass in fact, you may credibly assure yourselves. For from Jerusalem have men gone forth into the world, twelve in number, and these were unlearned, that knew not how to speak. But by the might of God they have proclaimed to all mankind that they were sent by Christ in order to teach all the word of God.”
“Zion is contrasted here with Mount Sinai, whence the law came, which in the Old Testament was the foundation of all true doctrine: But in the New Testament Mount Zion or Jerusalem has the privilege to announce that now a more perfect law would be given and a new Covenant of God with men would be established. Thus Zion and Jerusalem are, so to speak, the nursery and the mother of all churches and congregations of the New Testament.”—Starke.
5. Förster remarks on the end of Isa_2:3, that the gospel is the sceptre of Jesus Christ, according to Psa_110:2; Psa_45:7 (the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre). “For by the word Christ rules His church (Rom_10:14 sqq.).”
6. On Isa_2:4. “Pax optima rerum.” Foerster. The same author finds this prophecy fulfilled by Christ, who is our peace, who has made of both one, and broken down the partition that was between, in that by His flesh He took away the enmity (Eph_2:14). Foerster, moreover, combats the Anabaptists, who would prove from this passage that waging war is not permitted to Christians. For our passage speaks only against the privata Christianorum discordia. But waging war belongs to the publicum magistratus officium. Waging war, therefore, is not forbidden, if only the war is a just one. To be such, however, there must appear according to Thomas, part. 2 th. quœst. 40. 1) auctoritatis principis, 2) causa justa, 3) intentio bellantium justa, or ut allii efferunt: 1) jurisdictio indicentis, 2) offensio patientis, 3) intentio finem (?) convenientis.
7. On Isa_2:4. Jerome regarded the time of Augustus, after his victory at Actium, as the fulfilling of this prophecy. Others, as Cocceius, refer the words, “they shall turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks,” to the time of Constantine the Great; and the words “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” to the period of the restoration of religious peace in Germany,—finally the words: “they shall no more learn war,” to a future time that is to be hoped for. Such interpretations are, however, just as one-sided as those that look only for a spiritual fulfilment of prophecy. For how is an inward fulfilment of this promise of peace to be thought of which would not have the outward effects as its consequence? Or how is an outward fulfilment, especially such as would deserve the name, conceivable without the basis of the inward? Or must this peaceful time be looked for only in heaven? Why then does the promise stand here? It is a matter of course that there is peace in heaven: for where there is no peace there can be no heaven. The promise has sense only if its fulfilment is to be looked for on earth. The fulfilment will take place when the first three petitions of the Lord’s prayer are fulfilled, i.e. when God’s name shall be held holy by us as it in itself is holy, when the kingdom of God is come to everything, without and within, and rules alone over all, when the will of God is done on earth as in heaven. Christendom makes this prayer quite as much with the consciousness that it cannot remain unfulfilled, as with the consciousness that it must find its fulfilment on earth. For, if referred to heaven, these petitions are without meaning. Therefore there is a time of universal inward and outward peace to be looked for on earth. “It is not every day’s evening,” i.e. one must await the event, and our earth, without the least saltus in cogitando, can yet experience a state of things that shall be related to the present, as the present to the period of trilobites and saurians. If one could only keep himself free from the tyranny of the present moment! But our entire, great public, that has made itself at home in Philistia, lives in the sweet confidence that there is no world beside that of which we take notice on the surface of the earth, nor ever was one, nor ever will be.
8. On Isa_2:4. Poets reverse the figure to portray the transition from peaceful to warlike conditions. Thus Virgil, Georg. I. 2:506 sq.:
Non ullus aratro
Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis.
Et curvæ rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.
Aeneide VII. 2:635 sq.:
Vomeris huc et falcis honos, huc omnis aratri
Cessit amor; recoquunt patrios fornacibus enses.
Ovid, Fast. I. 2:697 sqq.:
Bella diu tenuere viros. Erat aptior ensis
Vomere, cedebat taurus arator equo.
Sarcula cessabant, versique in pila ligones.
Factaque de rastri pondere cassia erat.
9. On Isa_2:5. As Isaiah puts the glorious prophecy of his fellow prophet Micah at the head, he illuminates the future with a splendid, shining, comforting light. Once this light is set up, it of itself suggests comparisons. The questions arise: how does the present stand related to that shining future? What difference obtains? What must happen for that condition of holiness and glory to be brought about? The Christian Church, too, and even each individual Christian must put himself in the light of that prophetic statement. On the one hand that will humiliate us, for we must confess with the motto of Charles V.: nondum! And long still will we need to cry: Watchman what of the night (Isa_21:11)? On the other hand the Prophet’s word will also spur us up and cheer us. For what stronger impulse can be imagined than the certainty that one does not contend in vain, but may hope for a reward more glorious than all that ever came into a man’s heart? (Isa_64:4; 1Co_2:9).
In the time of the second temple, in the evenings of the first days of the feast of Tabernacles, great candelabras were lighted in the forecourt of the temple, each having four golden branches, and their light was so strong that it was nearly as light as day in Jerusalem. That might be for Jerusalem a symbol of that “let us walk in the light of the Lord.” But Jerusalem rejoiced in this light, and carried on all sorts of pastime, yet it was not able to learn to know itself in this light, and by this self-knowledge to come to true repentance and conversion.
10. On Isa_2:8, “their land is full of idols.” “Not only images and pictures are idols, but every notion concerning God that the godless heart forms out of itself without the authority of the Scripture. The notion that the Mass is effective ex opere operato, is an idol. The notion that works are demanded for justification with God, is an idol. The notion that God takes delight in fasts, peculiar clothes, a special order of life, is an idol. God wills not that we should set up out of our own thoughts a fashion of worshipping Him; but He says: “In all places where I record My name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee,” Exo_20:24—Luther.
11. On Isa_2:9-21. When men have brought an idol into existence, that is just to their mind, whether it be an idolum manu factum, or an idolum mente excogitatum, there they are all wonder, all worship. “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” Then the idol has a time of great prosperity and glory. But sooner or later there comes a time when the judgment of God overtakes the idol and its servants. God suffers sin to become ripe like men let a conspiracy, like they let fruit ripen. But when the right time comes then He steps forth in such a fashion that they creep into mouse-holes to hide themselves, if it were possible, from the lightning of His eye and His hand. Where then are the turned-up noses, the big mouths, the impudent tongues? Thus it has often happened since the world began. But this being brought to confession shall happen in the highest degree to the puffed-up world at that day when they shall see that one whom they pierced, and whom they thought they might despise as the crucified One, coming in His glory to judge the world. Then they shall have anguish and sorrow, then shall they lament and faint away with apprehension of the things that draw nigh. But those that believed on the Lord in His holiness, shall then lift up their heads for that their redemption draws nigh. At that time, indeed, shall the Lord alone be high, and before Him shall bow the knees of all in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and all tongues must confess that Christ is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
12. On Isa_2:22. Of what do men not make idols! The great industrial expositions of modern times often fill me with dismay, when I have seen how men carry on an actual idolatrous worship with these products of human science and art, as if that all were not, in the end, God’s work, too, but human genius were alone the creator of these wonders of civilization. How wickedly this so-called worship of genius demeans itself ! How loathsome is the still more common cultus of power, mammon and the belly!
13. On Isa_3:1 sqq. Causa σωστική, etc. “The saving cause of the commonwealth is the possession of men of the sort here mentioned, which Plato also knew, and Cicero from Plato, each of whom judge, commonwealths would be blessed if philosophers, i.e., wise and adept men were to administer them.”—Foerster. The same writer cites among the causes why the loss of such men is ruinous, the changes that thence ensue. All changes in the commonwealth are hurtful. Xenoph. Hellen. Isaiah 2 : “εἰσὶ μὲν πᾶσαι μεταβολαὶ πολιτειῶν θανατηΦόροι.” Aristot. Metaph. Isaiah 2 : “ᾱἱμεταβολαὶ πάντων ταραχώδεις.”
14. On Isa_3:1. “The stay of bread,” etc. Vitringa cites Horat. Satir. L. II., 3 5:153 sq.:
Deficient inopem venœ te, ni cibus atque
Ingens accedit stomacho fultura ruenti.
And on Isa_3:2 sq. he cites Cicero, who, De Nat. Deorum III., calls these “prœsidia humana,” “firmamenta reipublicœ.” On Isa_3:6 sq. the same author cites the following passage from Livy (26 chap. 6): “Cum fame ferroque (Capuani) urgerentur, nec ulla spes superesset iis, qui nati in spem honorum erant, honores detrectantibus, Lesius querendo desertam et proditam a primoribus Capuam summum magistratum ultimus omnium Campanorum cepit!” On Isa_3:9 he quotes Seneca: De vita beata, chap. xii.: “Itaque quod unum habebant in peccatis bonum perdunt peccandi verecundiam. Laudant enim ea, quibus erubescant, et vitio gloriantur.”
15. On Isa_3:4; Isa_3:12. Foerster remarks: Pueri, etc. “Boys are of two sorts. Some are so in respect to age, others in respect to moral qualifications. So, too, on the contrary there is an old age of two sorts: “For honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the true gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is the true old age.” Wis_4:8-9. Examples of young and therefore foolish kings of Israel are Rehoboam (“the young fool gambled away ten whole tribes at one bet” 1 Kings 12). Ahaz, who was twenty years of age when he began to reign (2Ki_16:2). Manasseh who was twelve years (2Ki_21:1,) and Amon who was twenty-two years (2Ki_21:19).
16. On Isa_3:7. Foerster remarks: Nemo se, etc. “Let no one intrude himself into office, especially when he knows he is not fit for it,” and then cites: “Seek not of the Lord pre-eminence, neither of the king the seat of honor. Justify not thyself before the Lord; and boast not of thy wisdom before the king. Seek not to be judge, being not able to take away iniquity.” Sir_7:4-6.”—“Wen aber Gott schickt, den macht er auch geschickt.”
17. On Isa_3:8. “Their tongue and their doings are against the Lord.” Duplici modo, etc. “God may be honored by us in two outward ways: by word and deed, just as in the same way others come short; “to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” Judges 15.—Vitringa.
18. On Isa_3:9. “They hide not their sin.” Secunda post, etc. “The next plank after shipwreck, and solace of miseries is to hide one’s impiety.”—Jerome.
19. On Isa_3:10. “Now He comforts the pious as in Psalms 2. His anger will soon kindle, but it shall be well with all that trust in Him. So Abraham, so Lot was delivered; so the apostles and the remnant of Judah when Jerusalem was besieged. For the Lord helps the righteous (Psa_37:17; Psa_37:39).”—Luther.
20. On Isa_3:13-14.
“Judicabit judices judex generalis,
Neque quidquam proderit dignitas papalis,
Sive sit episcopus, sive cardinalis,
Reus condemnabitur, nec dicetur qualis.”
“Rhythmi vulgo noti,” quoted byFoerster.
21. On Isa_3:16 sq. Usus vestium, etc. “Clothes have a four-fold use: 1) they are the badge of guilt, or souvenir of the fall (Gen_3:7; Gen_3:10; Gen_3:21); 2) they should be coverings against the weather; 3) they may be ornaments for the body, (Pro_31:22; Pro_31:25); 4) they may serve as a mark of rank (2Sa_13:18).—The abuse of clothes is three-fold; 1) in regard to the material, they may be costlier or more splendid than one’s wealth or rank admits of; 2) in respect of form, they may betray buffoonery and levity; 3) in respect to their object, they may be worn more for the display of luxury and pride than for protection and modest adornment.”—Foerster.
22. On Isa_4:2. “Germen Jehovae est nomen Messiœ mysticum, a nemine intellectum, quam qui tenet mysterium Patris et Christi. Idem valet quod filius propago Patris naturalis, in quo patris sui imago et gloria perfectissime splendet, Jessaiae in seqq. (Isa_9:5) בן ,ילד, filius, Joanni ὁ λόγενής τοῦ θεοῦ,ὁυἱὸς πρωὀτοκος μονογενής, processio Patris naturaλis. Est hic eruditi cujusdam viri elegans observatio, quae eodem tendit, quam non licet intactam praetermittere. Comparat ille inter se nomina Messiœ צמח דוד (Jer_23:5) et צמח יהוה in hoc loco. Cum autem prior appellatio absque dubitatione innuat, Messiam fore filium Davidis, docet posteriorem ἀναλογικῶς non posse aliud significare quam filium Jehovae, quod nomen Christi Jesu est μυστικώτερον, omni alio nomine excellentius. Addit non minus docte, personam, quae hic germen Jehovae dicitur, deinceps a propheta nostro appellari Jehovam (Isa_28:5).”—Vitringa. This exposition, which is retained by most Christian and orthodox commentators, ignores too much the fundamental meaning of the word צֶמַח, “Branch.” It is, nevertheless, not incorrect so far as the broader meaning includes the narrower concentrically. If “Branch of Jehovah” signifies all that is the personal offshoot of God, then, of course, that one must be included who is such in the highest and most perfect sense, and in so far the passage Isa_28:5 does not conflict with exposition given by us above.
[J. A. Alexander joins with Vitringa and Hengstenberg in regarding “the fruit of the earth,” as referring to the same subject as “the branch of the Lord,” viz.: the Messiah; and thus, while the latter term signifies the divine nature of the Messiah, the former signifies His human origin and nature; or if we translate “land” instead of earth, it points to his Jewish human origin. Thus appears an exact correspondence to the two parts of Paul’s description, Rom_1:3-4, and to the two titles used in the New Testament in reference to Christ’s two natures, Son of God and Son of Man.—Tr.].
23. On Isa_4:3-4. Great storms and upheavals, therefore, are needful, in order to make the fulfilment of this prophecy possible. There must first come the breath of God from above, and the flame of God from beneath over the earth, and the human race must first be tossed and sifted. The earth and mankind must first be cleansed by great judgments from all the leaven of evil. [J. A. Alexander, with Luther, Calvin, Ewald, maintains concerning the word Spirit in Isa_4:4, that “the safest and most satisfactory interpretation is that which understands by it a personal spirit, or as Luther expresses it, the Spirit who shall judge and burn.”—Tr.]. What survives these judgments is the remnant of which Isaiah speaks. This shall be holy. In it alone shall the Lord live and rule. This remnant is one with the new humanity which in every part, both as respects body and soul, will represent the image of Christ the second Adam. This remnant, at the same time, comprehends those whose names are written in the book of life. What sort of a divine book this may be, with what sort of corporal, heavenly reality, of course we know not. For Himself God needs no book. Yet if we compare the statements of the Revelation of John regarding the way in which the last judgment shall be held, with certain other New Testament passages, I think we obtain some explanation. We read Mat_19:28, that on the day of the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, the twelve apostles, too, shall sit on twelve thrones to judge the generations of Israel. And 1Co_5:2, we read that the saints shall judge the world. But, Rev_20:11, we find again the great white throne, whereon sits the great Judge of the living and the dead, after that, just before (Rev_4:4), it was said: “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them.” Afterwards it reads (Rev4:12): “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” And (Rev 4:15). “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” From this description there seems to me to result that the books necessarily are meant for those who are, by the Supreme Judge charged with the judgment of particular ones. To this end they need, in the first place, many books that contain the works of individuals. God has a book-keeping for the life of every man. This divine record will be produced to every single one at the day of judgment. Is he a Jew? by one of the twelve Apostles. Is he a heathen? by some other saint. No man shall be able to remonstrate against this account for it will carry the evidence of truth in itself, and in the consciences of those to be judged. Should such a protest occur, the arraigned will be referred to the book of life. This is only one. For it contains only names. After this manner will the separation be accomplished, spoken of in Mat_25:32 sq. For those whose names are found in the book of life go to the right side; the rest to the left. Then the great Judge Himself takes up the Word in the manner described in Mat_25:34 sqq., and calls the righteous to Himself, that they may inherit the kingdom that is prepared for them. But the wicked He repulses from Him into everlasting fire, that is prepared for the devil and his angels, in regard to which the account of the judgment in Matthew 25, as far as the end is concerned, harmonizes entirely with Rev_20:15.
24. On Isa_4:5-6. “The pillar of fire and cloud belongs to the miraculous graces by which the founding of the Old Testament kingdom of God was glorified just as the New Testament kingdom was by the signs that Jesus did, and by the charismata of the Apostolic time. But that appearance was quite appropriate to the state of developed revelation of that time. This had not reached the New Testament level, and not even the prophetic elevation that was possible under the Old Testament, but only the legal in which the divine stands outwardly opposed to the human. God is present among His people, but still in the most outward way; He does not walk in a human way among men; there is, too, no inward leading of the congregation by the Holy Spirit, but an outward conducting by a visible heavenly appearance. And, for these revelations to the whole people, God makes use entirely of nature, and, when it concerns His personal manifestation, of the elements. He does so, not merely in distinction from the patriarchal theophanies, …, but, particularly in contrast with heathenism, in order to accustom the Israelitish consciousness from the first not to deify the visible world, but to penetrate through it to the living, holy God, who has all the elements of nature at command as the medium of His revelation.”—Auberlen.
As at the close of John’s Revelation (chaps. 21, 22) we see the manifestation of the Godhead to humanity return to its beginning (Genesis 2, 3, 4), in as much as that end restores just that with which the beginning began, i.e. the dwelling of God with men, so, too, we see in Isa_4:5-6, a special manifestation of the (relative) beginning time recur again in the end time; the pillar of fire and cloud. But what in the beginning was an outward and therefore enigmatical and unenduring appearance, shall at last be a necessary and abiding factor of the mutual relation between God and mankind, that shall be established for ever in its full glory. There shall come a time wherein Israel shall expand to humanity and humanity receive power to become Israel, wherein, therefore, the entire humanity shall be Israel. Then is the tabernacle of God with men no more a pitiful tent, made of mats, but the holy congregation is itself the living abode of God; and the gracious presence of Almighty God, whose glory compares with the old pillar of fire and cloud, like the new, eternal house of God, with the old perishable tabernacle, is then itself the light and defence of His house.
25. On Isa_4:5-6. “But give diligence to learn this, that the Prophet calls to mind, that Christ alone is destined to be the defence and shade of those that suffer from heat and rain. Fasten your eyes upon Him, hang upon Him as ye are exhorted to do by the divine voice, ‘Him shall ye hear!’ Whoever hearkens to another, whoever looks to any other flesh than this, it is all over with him. For He alone shelters us from the heat, that comes from contemplating the majesty (i.e. from the terror that God’s holiness and righteousness inspire), He alone covers us from the rain and the power of Satan. This shade affords us a coolness, so that the dread of wrath gives way. For wrath cannot be there where thou seest the Son of God given to death for thee, that thou mightest live. Therefore I commend to you that name of Christ, wherewith the Prophet adorns Him, that He is a tabernacle for shade against the heat, a refuge and place of concealment from rain and tempest.”—Luther.—With some modification, we may apply here the comprehensive turn Foerster gives to our passage: 1) The dwelling of Mount Zion is the church; 2) the heat is the flaming wrath of God, and the heat of temptation (1Pe_4:12; Sir_2:4-5); 3) tempest and rain are the punishments of sins, or rather the inward and outward trials (Psalms 2.; Isa_57:20); 4) the defence or the pillar of cloud and fire is Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 10).
26. On Isa_5:1-7. This parable has a brother in the New Testament that looks very much like it. I might say: the head is almost the same. For the beginning of that New Testament parable (Mat_21:33; Mar_12:1), “A man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a wine-fat and built a tower,” is manifestly imitated after our passage. But here it is the vineyard that is bad, while there, in the New Testament, the husbandmen are good for nothing. Here the Lord appears as at once owner and cultivator of the vineyard; there the owner and cultivators are distinguished. This arises from the fact that the Lord Jesus apparently had in His mind the chiefs of the people, “the high-priests and elders” (Mat_21:23-24). From this it is manifest that here as there the vineyard is the nation. In Isaiah, however, the vineyard, that is to say the vine itself is accused. The whole people is represented as having equally gone to destruction. In the Synoptists, on the other hand, it is the chiefs and leaders that come between the Lord and His vineyard, and would exclude Him from His property, in order to be able to obtain it wholly for themselves, and divide it amongst them. Therefore there it is more the wicked greed of power and gain in the great that is reproved; here the common falling away of the whole nation.
27. Isa_5:8. Here the Prophet denounces the rich, the aristocracy, and capital. Thus he takes the part of the poor and lowly. That grasping of the rich and noble, which they display sometimes like beasts of prey, at other times gratify in a more crafty and legal fashion, the Prophet rebukes here in the sharpest manner. God’s work is opposed to every sin, and ever stands on the side of those that suffer oppression, no matter what may be their rank. God is no respecter of persons (Deu_10:17 sq.).
28. Isa_5:11-17. The morning hour, the hour when light triumphs over darkness, ought to be consecrated to works of light, as it is said: Aurora Musis amica, ἡώς τοι προΦέρει μἑυ, προφέρει δὲκαὶ ἕργου (Hesiod. ἑργ. κ. ήμ. 540) Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund. “It was,” says Foerster, “a laudable custom among the Persians, that the chamberlains entering in to their kings early in the morning, cried out with a loud voice: ‘Arise, O king, attend to business, as Mesoromastes commands.” On the other hand, “they that be drunken are drunken in the night,” 1Th_5:7 sq. So much the worse, then, when men do the works of night even in the early hour, and dare to abuse the light. “Plenus venter despumat in libidines,” says Augustine. In vino ἀσωτία (Eph_5:18). Corpus, opes, animam luxu Germania perdit. Melancthon. On Isa_5:15 Foerster cites the expression of Augustin: “God would not suffer any evil to be done in the world unless some good might thence be elicited.”
29. Isa_5:18. “Cords of vanity are false prejudices and erroneous conclusions. For example: no one is without sin, not even the holiest; God does not take notice of small sins; he that is among wolves must howl with them; a man cannot get along in the world with a scrupulous, tender conscience; the Lord is merciful, the flesh is weak, etc. By such like a man draws sin to him, binds his conscience fast, and resists the good motions of preventing grace. Thick cart-ropes signify a high degree of wickedness, the coarsest and most revolting prejudices. For example: God has no concern about human affairs; godliness delivers no one from misery and makes no one blessed; the threatenings of the prophets are not to be feared; there is no divine providence, no heaven, no hell (Deu_29:17-19). Out of such a man twists and knots a stout rope, with which he draws to him manifest blasphemy, entangles himself in it, so that often he cannot get loose, but is sold as a servant under sin (Rom_6:16; 1Ki_21:20; 1Ki_21:25).” Starke.
30. Isa_5:19. “The wicked mock at the patience and long-suffering of God, as if He did not see or care for their godless existence, but forgot them, and cast them out of mind (Psa_10:11), so that the threatened punishment would be omitted. They would say: there has been much threatening, but nothing will come of it; if God is in earnest, let Him, etc.; we don’t mind threats; let God come on if He will! Comp. Isa_22:12-13; Isa_28:21-22; Amo_5:18; Jer_5:12; Jer_8:11; Jer_17:15; Eze_12:21 sqq.” Starke.
31. Isa_5:20. “To make darkness of light, means to smother in oneself the fundamental truths that may be proved from the light of nature, and the correct conclusions inferred from them, but especially revealed truths that concern religion, and to pronounce them in others to be prejudices and errors. Bitter and sweet have reference to constitution, how it is known and experienced. To make sweet of bitter means, to recommend as sweet, pleasant and useful, what is bad and belongs to darkness, and is in fact bitter and distasteful, after one himself believes he possesses in the greatest evil the highest good.” Starke.
32. Isa_5:21. “Quotquot mortales” etc. As many as, taking counsel of flesh, pursue salvation with confidence of any sort of merit of their own or external privilege, a thing to which human nature is much inclined, oppose their own device to the wisdom of God, and, according to the prophet, are called wise in their own eyes (Isa_28:15; Isa_30:1-2; Jer_8:8-9; Jer_9:23 sq.; Jer_18:18). Vitringa.
33. Isa_5:26 sqq. The Prophet here expresses in a general way the thought that the Lord will call distant nations to execute judgment on Jerusalem, without having in mind any particular nation. Vitringa quotes a remarkable passage from the excerpts of John Antiochenus in Valesius (p. 816), where it is said, that immediately after Titus had taken Jerusalem, ambassadors from all the neighboring nations came to him to salute him as victor and present him crowns of honor. Titus refused these crowns, “saying that it was not he that had effected these things, but that they were done by God in the display of His wrath, and who had prospered his hands.” Comp. also the address of Titus to his soldiers after the taking of Jerusalem in Joseph. B. Jud. VII. 19.
HOMILETICAL HINTS
1. Isa_2:6-11. Idolatry. 1) What occasions it (alienation from God, Isa_2:6 a); 2) The different kinds: a. a coarse kind (Isa_2:6 b, Isa_2:8), b. a more refined kind (Isa_2:7); 3) Its present appearance (great honor of the idols and of their worshippers, Isa_2:9); 4) Its fate at last (deepest humiliation before the revelation of the majesty of God of all that do not give glory to Him (Isa_2:10; Isa_2:18).
2. Isa_2:12-22. The false and the true eminence. 1) False eminence is that which at first appears high, but at last turns out to be low (to this belongs impersonal as well as supersensuous creatures, which at present appear as the highest in the world, but at last, in the day of the Lord of Hosts, shall turn out to be nothing); 2) The real eminence is that which at first is inconspicuous and inferior, but which at last turns out to be the highest, in fact the only high one.
3. Isa_3:1-9. Sin is the destruction of a people. 1) What is sin? Resisting the Lord: a. with the tongue, b. with deeds, c. with the interior being (Isa_3:8-9); 2) In what does the destruction consist (or the fall according to Isa_3:8 a)? a. in the loss of every thing that constitutes the necessary and sure support of the commonwealth (Isa_3:1-3); b. in insecure and weak props rising up (Isa_3:4); c. in the condition that follows of being without a Master (Isa_3:5); d. in the impossibility of finding any person that will take the governance of such a ruinous state (Isa_3:6-7).
4. Isa_3:4. Insurrection is forbidden by God in express words, who says to Moses “that which is altogether just thou shalt follow,” Deu_16:20. Why may not God permit an intolerable and often unjust authority to rule a land for the same reason that He suffers children to have bad and unjust parents, and the wife a hard and intolerable husband, whose violence they cannot resist? Is it not expressly said by the Prophet “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them?” “I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath,” Hos_13:11. Tholuck.
5. Isa_3:10-13. “Let us learn to distinguish between false and real comfort.” 1) False comfort deals in illusion: the real deals in truth; 2) The false produces a present effect; the real a lasting one; 3) The false injures the one comforted; the real is health to him.” Harms.
6. Isa_4:2-6. The holiness of God’s Church on earth that is to be looked for in the future. 1) Its preliminary: the judgment of cleansing and purifying (Isa_4:4); 2) What is requisite to becoming a partaker? a. belonging to the remnant (Isa_4:2-3); b. being written in the book of life (Isa_4:3); 3) The surety of its permanence: the gracious presence of the Lord (Isa_4:5-6).
7. Isa_5:21. The ruin of trusting in one’s own Wisdom 1) Those that have such confidence set themselves above God, which is: a. the greatest wickedness, b. the greatest folly; 2) They challenge the Divine Majesty to maintain its right (Isa_5:24).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–6 fenced--rather, "digged and trenched" the ground to prepare it…
fenced--rather, "digged and trenched" the ground to prepare it for planting the vines [MAURER].
choicest vine--Hebrew, sorek; called still in Morocco, serki; the grapes had scarcely perceptible seeds; the Persian kishmish or bedana, that is, "without seed" (Gen 49:11).
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tower--to watch the vineyard against the depredations of man or beast, and for the use of the owner (Mat 21:33).
wine-press--including the wine-fat; both hewn, for coolness, out of the rocky undersoil of the vineyard.
wild grapes--The Hebrew expresses offensive putrefaction, answering to the corrupt state of the Jews. Fetid fruit of the wild vine [MAURER], instead of "choicest" grapes. Of the poisonous monk's hood [GESENIUS]. The Arabs call the fruit of the nightshade "wolf grapes" (Deu 32:32-33; Kg2 4:39-41). JEROME tries to specify the details of the parable; the "fence," angels; the "stones gathered out," idols; the "tower," the "temple in the midst" of Judea; the "wine-press," the altar.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 1, 2. Now will I sing — Rather, Let…
1, 2. Now will I sing — Rather, Let me sing. The singing was in the form of chanting. Such was probably the mode of the delivery of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning this “vineyard” — the Jewish Church.
To my… beloved — In honour of my beloved, Jehovah, Israel’s manifested deity.
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Vineyard — The vineyard symbolizes Jehovah’s people — the tribes of Israel.
Fruitful hill — Literally, on the horn of the son of oil; that is, a high and very fat and fragile ridge.
He fenced it — Girded the holy land with isolating limits, and separated Israel from the nations with isolating institutions and laws.
Gathered out the stones — A necessary work in preparing for a “vineyard.” The expression symbolizes the casting out the idolatrous tribes that encumbered the land.
Planted… choicest vine — The noble stock of Abraham.
Tower in… midst — Vineyards and gardens required to be watched, and towers and booths, the former especially, in established vineyards were erected. These terms signify watchful protection: they may also denote the moral influence of the temple and its worship in Jerusalem.
Winepress — A press was a necessary equipment to a rich vineyard. The expressed juice of the grape is here symbolical of the refreshing spiritual strength derived from the worship of Jehovah.
He looked — He expected, awaited, a good crop; symbolic of a fruitful religious character. But wild grapes only appeared; a bad fruitage, emblematic of bad men, bad principles, base idolatry.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–6 1. (Four lines.) The first half of the verse…
1. (Four lines.) The first half of the verse contains the preamble, the second is the commencement of the poem.
Now will I sing … vineyard] Translate:—
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I would sing of my Friend,
My Friend’s song about his vineyard.
The A.V. has the merit, however, of distinguishing the two closely related words used for friend (“wellbeloved” and “beloved”). The difference probably has only a metrical value. Isaiah does not mean as yet to excite curiosity as to who the “Friend” is, only he cannot, even in a parable, divest himself of the consciousness that he represents the interests of Another.
A vineyard had my Friend
On a fertile peak.
a very fruitful hill] lit. “a horn, the son of fatness.” “Apertos Bacchus amat colles” (Verg. Georg. ii. 113). The land of Palestine is no doubt meant, but it is a mistake to allegorise the details of the imagery. This use of the word “horn” for “hill” is not found elsewhere in the O. T., but has many parallels in-Arabic as well as other languages (cf. “Schreckhorn,” &c.). It is chosen here for the sake of the assonance with the word for “vineyard.”
1–7. The Parable of the Vineyard and its Application
One of the finest exhibitions of rhetorical skill and power which the book contains. The prophet appears in the guise of a minstrel before an assemblage of his countrymen, and proceeds to recite the unfortunate experience of a “friend” of his with his vineyard. The simple story, told in light popular verse, disarms the suspicions of the crowd, and the singer, having secured their sympathy, demands a verdict on the course which a man might be expected to pursue with so refractory a vineyard as this (Isa_5:3). The answer was so obvious that the people, like our Lord’s hearers on a similar occasion (Mat_21:41), had practically assented to their own condemnation before they clearly perceived the drift of the discourse. But from this point onwards the parable becomes more and more transparent, till at last the prophet, with a sudden change of rhythm (see on Isa_5:6), throws off all disguise and drives home the lesson of the whole in the crashing lines of Isa_5:7.
The idea of Israel as the Lord’s vineyard probably originated with Isaiah. (Cf. ch. Isa_3:14, Isa_27:2 ff.; Jer_2:21; Jer_12:10 f.; Psa_80:8 ff.; Mat_20:1 ff; Mat_21:33 ff. and parallels.)
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–6 (1) Now will I sing to my wellbeloved.—Literally, Now…
V.
(1) Now will I sing to my wellbeloved.—Literally, Now let me sing. The chapter bears every mark of being a distinct composition, perhaps the most elaborately finished in the whole of Isaiah. The parable with which it opens has for us the interest of having obviously supplied a starting-point for a later prophet (Jer_2:21), and for our Lord’s teaching in the like parable of Mat_21:33-41. Here, however, there is the distinctive touch of the irony of the opening verse. The prophet presents himself, as it were, in the character of a minstrel, ready to sing to his hearers one of the love-songs in which their culture delighted (Amo_6:5.) In its language and rhythm it reminds us of the Song of Solomon. The very word “beloved” recalls Son_5:1-2; the description of the vineyards, that of Son_8:11-13. The probability that the parallelism was intentional is increased by the coincidence of Isa_7:23, and Son_8:11, which will meet us further on. On this assumption Isaiah’s words have a special interest as showing how early that poem lent itself to a mystical interpretation. One might almost conjecture that the prophet allured the people to listen by music as well as words, and appeared, as Elisha and other prophets had done, with harp or pipe in hand (2Ki_3:15; 1Sa_10:5; 1Sa_16:23; Isa_30:29). The frequency of such hymns (Isaiah 12, 25, Isa_26:1-4) shows, at any rate, that the prophet had received the training of a psalmist. (See Introduction.)
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A song of my beloved.—A slightly different reading adopted by some critics gives A song of love. The “beloved” is purposely not named, but appears afterwards as none other than Jehovah. The word, closely connected with the ideal name Jedediah (the beloved of Jehovah; 2Sa_12:25), occurs in twenty-six passages of Song of Sol., and not elsewhere.
A very fruitful hill.—Literally, a horn, the son of oil. The combination “horn of oil” in 1Sa_16:1; 1Sa_16:13, and 1Ki_1:39, suggests the thought that the phrase is equivalent to “the horn of the anointed” (Kay). The term “horn” was a natural synonym for a hill. So we have Matterhorn, Aarhorn, &c., in the Alps. Oil was naturally symbolic of fertility. In Psa_80:8-16, we have a striking parallel. The “fruitful hill” was Canaan as a whole, with a special reference to Judah and Jerusalem. The “choicest vine”—literally, vine of Sorek (Gen_49:11; Jer_2:21), bearing a small dark purple grape—pointed back to the fathers of the nation, who, idealised in the retrospect, were as the heroes of faith compared with the then present generation. The picture which forms the parable might almost take its place among the Georgics of Palestine. The vineyard on the hillside could not be ploughed, and therefore the stones had to be taken out by hand. It was fenced against the beasts of the field. There was a tower for a watchman to guard it against the attacks of robbers. (Comp. Virg. Georg. ii. 399-419.) Each part has its own interpretation.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–6 Vers. 1-7. ISRAEL REBUKED BY THE PARABLE OF A…
Vers. 1-7. ISRAEL REBUKED BY THE PARABLE OF A VINEYARD. This chapter stands in a certain sense alone, neither closely connected with what precedes nor with what follows, excepting that it breathes throughout a tone of denunciation. There is also a want of connection between its parts, the allegory of the first section being succeeded by a series of rebukes for sins, expressed in the plainest language, and the rebukes being followed by a threat of punishment, also expressed with plainness. The resemblance of the parable with which the chapter opens to one of those delivered by our Lord, and recorded in the three synoptic Gospels, (Mat_21:33-41 Mar_12:1-9 Luk_20:9-16) has been frequently noticed.
Now will I sing to my Well-beloved. The prophet sings to Jehovah a song concerning his vineyard. The song consists of eight lines, beginning with "My Well-beloved," and ending with "wild grapes." It is in a lively, dancing measure, very unlike the general style of Isaiah"s poetry. The name "Well-beloved" seems to be taken by the prophet from the Song of Songs, where it occurs above twenty times. It well expresses the feeling of a loving soul towards its Creator and Redeemer. A song of my Well-beloved. Bishop Lowth translates "A song of loves," and Mr. Cheyne "A love-song;" but this requires an alteration of the text, and is unsatisfactory from the fact that the song which follows is not a "love-song." May we not understand the words to mean "a song concerning my Well-beloved in respect of his vineyard?" Touching his vineyard. Israel is compared to a "vine" in the Psalms, (Psa_80:8-16) and the Church of God to a "garden" in Canticles; (Son_4:12 Son_5:1) perhaps also to a "vineyard" in the same book. (Son_8:12) Isaiah may have had this last passage in his mind. My Beloved hath a vineyard; rather, had a vineyard (ampelwyh tw hgaphmenw , LXX). In a very fruitful hill. So the passage is generally understood, since keren, horn, is used for a height by the Arabs (as also by the Germans, e.g. Matterhorn, Wetterhorn, Aarhorn, etc.), and "son of oil" is a not unlikely Orientalism for "rich" or "fruitful." With the "hill" of this passage compare the "mountain" of Isa_2:2, both passages indicating that the Church of God is set on aft eminence, and "cannot be hid". (Mat_5:14)
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Vers. 1-7. God"s care for man, and man"s ingratitude.
Three times has God made himself a vineyard upon earth, planted a plantation of choice vines, endued by him with the capacity of bringing forth excellent fruit, fenced his vineyard round with care, cleared its soil of stones, pruned its superfluous shoots, hoed out the weeds from between the vine-stocks, bestowed on it all possible tendance, and looked to see a suitable result; and three times has the result, for which he had every right to look, not followed.
I THE FIRST VINEYARD THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD. Man was placed in a world which God saw to be very good"; (Gen_1:31) he was endued with excellent powers; he was given dominion over the beasts; he was bidden to "increase and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it"; (Gen_1:28) he was guarded from a thousand dangers; he was fenced round by the Almighty arms; God"s Spirit "strove with him", (Gen_6:3) chastened him, warned him, spoke through his conscience, and showed him the right path to walk in. What more could he have done to his first vineyard, that he did not do to it? Yet the time came when he "looked upon the earth"; (Gen_6:12) looked for the fruits of what he had done; looked for "judgment and righteousness." And what did he find when he looked? "The wickedness of man was great in the earth; every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually". (Gen_6:5) "The earth was corrupt before God; all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.... the earth was full of violence". (Gen_6:11, Gen_6:12) The vineyard that should have brought forth grapes had brought forth wild grapes. God"s care for man had been met by man with ingratitude towards God; and it only remained that God should take vengeance, and lay his vineyard waste, and so vindicate his justice.
II THE SECOND VINEYARD THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. This is the vineyard whereof Isaiah especially speaks. God planted his second vineyard, Israel, on the "very fruitful" upland of Palestine land of corn and wine, of bread and vineyards, of oil olive and of honey"; (2Ki_18:32) "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein they might eat bread without scarceness, and needed not to lack anything; a land whose stones were iron, and out of whose hills they might dig brass". (Deu_8:7-9) He fenced his vineyard round with laws and ordinances morally, as with mountains and deserts topographically; he cleared out from it the stones that marred its soil, the wicked nations of offense that once dwelt amid his people; he planted it with choice vine-stocks, the children of "faithful Abraham;" he built a tower Jerusalem in the midst of it, and made therein a winepress the temple where he would have the gifts and offerings of the people, their good works, laid up in store; and he then "looked that his vineyard should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes." Oppression, wrong, robbery, murder, the form of religion without the power, covetousness, drunkenness, vanity, impurity, these were what his eyes beheld when he cast them on his chosen people, who were "a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that were corrupters". (Isa_1:4) Greater benefits than those bestowed on the first vineyard had been met by a deeper ingratitude; and now the time was coming when the second vineyard would be laid waste, withered up, and utterly "ruined". (Isa_3:8)
III THE THIRD VINEYARD THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. God has yet planted a third vineyard, which he calls "his Church", (Mat_16:18) the assembly of his "selected ones." He has not fixed it in any particular land, but has given it the whole fruitful earth for its habitation. Yet has he fenced it round, and separated it off from the rest of mankind by laws and rites and ordinances, which are peculiar, and made it a world within a world, a society within a society. He has gathered out from it the stones of many heresies; he has planted it with choice vines, the "chosen vessels" whom his grace has from time to time converted from unbelief to the true faith; he has given it for its "tower" of strength himself, and for its "wine-press" the book of life, in which he records its good deeds. And now, what is the result? Has his constant, tender care awakened the gratitude which it ought to have awakened? Has his Church brought forth such fruit as might have been anticipated? Is it not to be feared that even now his eye, resting on his third vineyard with its searching gaze, looks for something which it does not find demands "grapes," and sees little but "wild grapes?
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-7. The parable of the vineyard.
I NOTICE THE ART OF THE PARABLE. It has been remarked, "A proverb finds him who a sermon flies." Pictures from nature are acceptable to all, especially of that nature which is familiar to the imagination of the listener. Through the imagination we may glide into our listener"s heart and conscience. The truth comes with much more power when it is made to glance from an object intermediate between the mind and its naked reality. A great secret of teaching is to leave the learner much of the work to do. Here, as he looks upon the bright picture drawn by the prophet, the wrappings of the parable gradually fall aside, and the truth itself stands out.
II THE PICTURE OF THE VINEYARD. The close touch of accuracy suits the parable. Then follows a short song.
1. Situation of the vineyard. It lay on the horn of Ben-Shamen," i.e. son of fatness; on a fertile height. The Roman poet sung that the vine loves the open sunny hills (Virgil," Georg.," 2:113). The description is of fruitful Canaan, flowing with milk, honey, and wine. We may think of the beautiful slopes of the Rhine.
2. The care expended on the vineyard. It had been fenced, the stones had been cleared from it, and it had been planted with the choicest vines. Some take the word rendered "fenced" in the sense of digged about, thoroughly digged. The watchtower had also been set up in the midst of the field, a post of observation and of guard against the jackals and the foxes in the ripening time.
3. The thankless soil. The vine-dresser"s hope is deceived; for, instead of the true grapes wild ones only appear, or, as the LXX render akanthas, thorns. Gesenius and others think the plant meant is the monk"s-hood or nightshade, which produces berries like the grapes in appearance, but poisonous. If we compare the story in 2Ki 4:39-4:1, also Deu_32:32, 33 ("vine of Sodom, grapes of gall, bitter clusters"), this will seem probable. The Arabs call them wolf-grapes. The idea is caught by one of our poets when he sings of "Dead Sea fruits that tempt the taste, And turn to ashes on the lips.
III APPLICATION.
1. Jehovahs appeal. It is an appeal to memory and to conscience. What more could God have done? Israel had been selected for special service and fruitfulness had been fixed in a fertile land, her life and worship centered in the holy city. What was that city now? A scene of order, morality, good government? Alas! a "den of thieves," a scene of misery and anarchy. Instead of the genuine grapes of a national life strong and pure, the poisonous berries of luxury and vice. Such must be the result where man grafts his own pride or folly upon the stock of conscience.
2. Jehovahs denunciation. The thick thorn fence shall be removed, and the vineyard shall, become a prey to every trampling beast and invader. The hand of the pruner and the digger shall be stayed, the clouds shall suspend their gift of rain. Every protection and every blessing shall be withdrawn, and the thankless nation shall earn its appropriate wages. Having deserted God, God will now desert her. So must it ever be with the nation and the individual. Unless there is a constant disposition to redress discovered wrong, to reform manifest evil, the doom must be felt. "Thy vineyard shall be wasted, thy candlestick taken from its place". (Rev_2:5)
3. The reason of the judgment. In poignant language, by the use of paronomasia, or play on words, the prophet announces the ground of the Divine decision. He waited for Mish-path, i.e. Might, and behold Mispath, i.e. Might; for Zedakah, i.e. Exactness, and lo Zeaqach, i.e. Exaction. A bitter intensity suggests this form of speech.
IV PERSONAL APPLICATION. In our sinful miseries God is calling us to account. Our life-failure, whose fault is it? Does not Nature pour her beauty around us, instruct us from childhood, fill our sense and fancy with wonder and joy? Does not the world of men afford us a daily school of experience? Is not every suffering a pruning-knife, every change of life like a cleaning of the ground from weeds and stones? If our lives turn out selfish and vicious, where does the responsibility lie? Where, except in the secret fault that may poison all God"s good? "Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws. They send us bound To rules of reason. Holy messengers; Pulpits and Sundays; sorrow dogging sin; Afflictions sorted; anguish of all sizes; Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in! Bibles laid open; millions of surprises; Blessings beforehand; ties of gratefulness; The sounds of glory ringing in our ears; Without, our shame; within, our consciences Angels and grace; eternal hopes and fears 1 Yet all these fences, and their whole array, One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away. J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-7. Privilege and penalty.
We have a striking picture of
I THE FULNESS OF THE DIVINE PROVISION. (Vers. 1 4.) The second verse describes in detail the processes by which the vineyard is prepared for fruitfulness, and in the fourth verse the question is asked, "What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" The idea is that of the fullness of the Divine provision for the Jewish nation. God had provided:
1. Illustrious men Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, David, etc. A perfect Law; perfect inasmuch as it reflected his own holiness, and at the same time was accommodated to their immaturity.
2. A helpful ritual, a series of ceremonies adapted to the age and to their nature.
3. Providential discipline; all the attractive and inviting influences of prosperity together with the solemnizing and cleansing influences of adversity.
We have now a corresponding fullness of provision for mankind in the gospel of Christ. We have:
1. The knowledge of God and of his will revealed in Christian truth.
2. The way to himself and to his pardoning love opened by the mediation and atonement of his Son, our Savior.
3. The influences of the Holy Spirit, which are the purchase of his work and the promise of his Word.
4. The leadership of him who lived a perfect life, and offers himself as the Exemplar as well as the Friend of man.
5. The hope of eternal glory. The Author of the salvation in Jesus Christ may well address us and say, "What more could have been done?" We may almost say that the ingenuity of Divine love is spent and exhausted on the provision which is made in the gospel for the return, for the acceptance, for the renewal, for the elevation, of the children of men.
II THE SORENESS OF THE DIVINE DISSATISFACTION. (Vers. 4, 7.) Centuries of bondage in idolatrous Egypt might well account for, if they could not excuse, a large measure of moral feebleness, of religious error, of spiritual declension. But centuries of Divine teaching and Divine discipline should have wrought much of restoration. The sovereign Ruler of Israel had a right to expect rich fruit in his well-cultivated vineyard. But he was utterly disappointed. Instead of the good grapes he looked for, it brought forth" wild grapes;" instead of judgment was oppression; instead of righteousness, the cry of him that was wronged. In us, from us, who have been the recipients of his manifold mercies and of multiplied privileges in Christ Jesus, God looks for great things; he looks for penitence, faith, purity, spiritual worth, holy usefulness. Only too often he finds the miserable and guilty opposites of these-impenitence, unbelief, continuance in sin, moral unsightliness, injuriousness of life. And the heart of the Holy One is grieved. He who would have looked with delight on his "pleasant plant" looks with pain and sorrow on the fruitless tree, on the bush that bears poisonous berries. He who would have regarded with pleasure those "in whose heart are paths" observes with indignation and regret those whose hearts are as a tangled wilderness, uncultivated and useless. For these he has only the language of severe reproach and of stem and solemn warning.
III THE WEIGHT OF THE DIVINE PENALTY. (Vers. 5, 6.) The doom is destruction. The vineyard should, as a vineyard, entirely disappear. The defenses should be removed; the useful plant should give place to the useless thorn; the elements should work for its withering, and leave nothing that was desirable or valuable. God"s message to the guilty nation, Church, family, individual soul, is this solemn one the abuse of privilege will be visited by terrible tokens of Divine displeasure; all that was promising will be removed; the signs and the sources of life will be taken away; from him that hath not (that does not use what is in his power) will be taken his present privilege. (Mat_25:29) He who (that which) is exalted to heaven in opportunity will be cast down to hell in condemnation and in ruin. C. (Mat_11:23)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1–4 Now will I sing to my well-beloved
Isa_5:1-7
Now will I sing to my well-beloved
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Hopes concerning the vineyard
The Lords hopes and disappointment with His vineyard.
(A. B. Davidson, LL. D.)
Truth to be presented in varied form
Aarons bells must be wisely rung. Sometimes the treble of mercy sounds well, at other times the tenor of judgment, or counter tenor of reproof, sounds better: and it often happens that the mean of exhortation sounds best of all. It is wisdom to observe circumstances, and know how to curse as well as bless, chide as well as comfort, and speak war to a rebel as well as peace to a friend. And herein, indeed, lies the wisdom and faithfulness of a teacher. (N. Rogers.)
Who was the speaker?
It is an interesting question, and one to which the answer is not altogether obvious. And who is the well-beloved to whom these words are addressed? Only two answers seem possible. Either it must be the prophet who speaks, and his God that he is addressing; or else it must be the eternal Father that is addressing His co-eternal Son.
1. If we adopt, as most commentators seem to do, the former explanation, we have to face two very serious difficulties, neither of which can I meet.
(1) The prophet here uses a term of endearment which would be strangely inconsistent with his usual style of addressing God, and such a use of the Hebrew term here employed occurs nowhere else in Scripture. It is a term of endearment of the strongest kind, answering very closely to our English word darling; and it is easy to see that there is something very repugnant to our ideas of seemliness and reverence in the application of such a term to that God with whose majesty Isaiah was himself so profoundly impressed. In every other ease in which this word is used as a term of endearment, it is addressed by the stronger to the weaker, by the superior to the inferior. Thus Benjamin is spoken of as the beloved of the Lord in the blessings of Deuteronomy, the thought suggested being, that as Benjamin himself was Jacobs favourite, the darling of his heart, so the tribe was to be specially dear to the great Father of the race. But obviously, while Benjamin might justly he called the darling of Jacobs heart, it would have been, to say the least, somewhat incongruous to speak of Jacob as Benjamins darling. The term would have been wholly out of place here; and not less, but even more, out of place must it needs be in the lips of an Isaiah addressing his God.
(2) Yet another difficulty has to be faced if we make the prophet the singer; for in that case, his song clearly ends at the close of the second verse, whereas on this hypothesis it must be assumed that there is an abrupt transition from the speech of the prophet to the speech of God. But it seems clear that the whole passage, down to the end of the seventh verse, constitutes the song referred to in the first verse, and it is all spoken of as a song sung to the beloved.
2. Let us adopt the other explanation of the passage, and all at once becomes straightforward and self-consistent, the only difficulty involved being that we have here a marvellously explicit reference to a great theological verity, that was not fully revealed to the world till the Christian epoch--the doctrine of the distinction of Persons (as we are obliged to express it for lack of better terms) in the Divine Unity. This great truth is, however, implied in many other passages of Old Testament Scripture, and therefore its occurrence here need not trouble us. According to this second interpretation, it is the eternal Father that is here addressing His well-beloved Son, the Angel of the Covenant, to whose tutelage the ancient Theocracy was delivered, just as at a subsequent period He became, in the flesh, the Founder and Head of the Christian Church. Here the expression used is just what might be expected, and we are reminded of the voice which fell from heaven in New Testament times: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. In this exegesis the identity of the singer and the unity of the song is preserved throughout, There is no abrupt transition from the utterance of one person to that of another; for He who sings and He to whom the song is sung are one. The Father does Himself that which He does through the Divine Word, and hence the passage from the third person to the first in the third verse ceases to be embarrassing; nay, additional force is added to the Divine expostulation; for the Father is jealous with a holy jealousy for the Person and work of His Son. He knows how well that work has been done, and has all the more reason to complain of its having been denied its proper results and its merited reward. There is something infinitely pathetic in the idea of this song of lamentation, poured forth from the great Fathers heart of love into the sympathetic ear of His well-beloved Son, and in this enumeration of all that He, the well-beloved of the Father, had wrought for favoured Israel. When man was created, he was created as the result of the decree of a Divine council: Let us make man in our own image. And now when, after years of trial, man has proved himself a miserable failure, the Divine Father and the co-eternal Son are represented as conferring over the disastrous issue. (W. HayAitken, M. A.)
The vineyard song
There are plaintive songs, mournful songs, as well as songs expressive of joy and delight.
I. THE APPELLATIVE ADDRESS. My well-beloved. Can you call Jesus so? If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed at the coming of the Lord.
II. THE SONG. Observe, that whilst this vineyard is the choice of my well-beloved, and His own hand plants it, He has a right to the fruits. Take care and do not rob Him. Do not tell me anything about a sandy and barren Christianity. It is not worth twopence an acre, if you go by the measurement. Do not tell me of a tree in the Lords vineyard that brings forth no fruit; tell me rather of the post in the street. I look for the fruits of the Spirit, that He may be glorified in and by you.
III. THE KNOWLEDGE WHICH IS REQUISITE FOR THE SINGERS. (J. Iron.)
Unfruitfulness reproved
1. It is natural to ask, Who is this that says, I will sing a song to my Beloved! I take these words to be spoken, not in the person of Isaiah, but of God the Father to His Son our Lord, who in the evangelical style is called, the beloved Son of God, in whom He is well pleased. But how can the Church of those times be called the vineyard of the Son? I answer, Because as the Father created all things by Him, so by Him He has always governed all things, and more especially His Church.
2. The Church of God is styled a vineyard, which is a very pertinent resemblance of it. For as a vineyard is a plot of ground separated from common field and pasture, in order to be improved with such cultivation as that the vines and grapes it produces may supply the owner with generous wines: so Gods Church consists of a people chosen by Him out of the rest of the world, that they may worship Him by the laws and rules of His own revealing, and so exercise a purer religion, and abound in the fruits of good living, above other men, who have not the light of the same revelation, nor direction of the same laws. This similitude of a vine, or vineyard, for the justness of the resemblance, is several times used to denote the Church. (Psa_80:1-19.)
3. This vineyard is said to be situate in a very fruitful hill, alluding to the land of Canaan, which was a high-raised, and a very fertile soil, agreeable to the character which Moses gives of it (Deu_32:13).
4. God made a fence round about it, i.e., He distinguished His people from all other nations by peculiar laws, statutes, and observances, not only in religion, but even in civil life, in their very diet and conversation, so that it was impossible for them to remain Jews, and to accompany freely with the rest of the world. He also fenced them with a miraculous protection from the invasions of their adversaries, which bordered upon them on every side.
5. God cleared the soil of this vineyard from stones; not indeed in the literal sense, for this country pretty much abounds with rocks and flints, which are so far from being always prejudicial, that they are serviceable, not only for walls and buildings, but even for some parts of agriculture. But this is a proper continuation of the allegory, that as stones should be cast out of a vineyard, so God cast out the ancient inhabitants of Canaan, to make room for the children of Israel. And with them He cast out their idols, made of wood and stone, and demolished the temples dedicated to idolatry, that His own people might have no stumbling blocks left in their way, but might be wholly turned to His service.
6. He planted it with the choicest vine, the true religion, and form of government both ecclesiastical and civil, which He had revealed from heaven. He made excellent provision for the instruction of His people, and the promulgation of His will and pleasure among them.
7. After much cultivation of His vineyard and choice of His vine, He justly expected a plentiful product of the best kind of grapes; but was recompensed for all His pains with no better than the fruits of wild, uncultivated nature; grapes of Sodom and clusters of Gomorrah, as He complains (Deu_32:1-52). And He gives us a sample and taste of them in some of the following words He looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry. The great increase of their fields and flocks, wherewith He had blessed them, afforded them sufficient means of rendering those dues to religion, and loving kindness to their neighbours, especially to the more indigent sort, which by many sacred laws and serious exhortations He had enjoined. But instead of being led by the Divine beneficence to works of liberality and charity, they only studied how to sacrifice to their insatiable lusts and lewd affections.
8. Therefore with good reason God tells them and appeals to themselves for the justice of it, that He would take away the hedge of His vineyard, and my it open to be wasted and trodden under foot. The proper application of all this to ourselves, is briefly hinted by St. Paul (Rom_11:21). If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee. (W. Reading, M. A.)
Britain highly favoured of God
The natural advantages of Great Britain have been deemed extremely great; an island (says an early historian) whose valleys are as Eshcol, whose forests are as Carmel, whose hills as Lebanon, and whose defence is the ocean. But our country has to enumerate advantages of a still higher order,--both of a civil and of a religious nature. Our civil constitution is a fabric, which, on account of its symmetry and grandeur, has even called forth the admiration of foreigners. Respecting this invaluable constitution, the late Dr. Claudius Buchanan asks, Was it the peculiar wisdom of the Danes which constructed it? or of the Saxons, or of the Normans, or of the natives of the island? What is the name of the great legislator who conceived the mighty plan? Was it created by chance, or by design?. . .We know well by whose counsel and providence our happy government hath been begun and finished. Our constitution is the gift of God, and we have to acknowledge His goodness for this blessing, as we thank Him for life, and breath, and all things. But should we be less grateful for the benefits of a religious description, which have been conferred in past years upon our ancestors, and so copiously upon ourselves? We have reason to believe that the holy light of Christian truth was introduced amongst the Britons in the apostolic age, and during the captivity of Caractacus; and that numerous churches being gradually formed, the sanguinary rites of the Druids, practised in the dark recesses of their forests, were exchanged for the pure worship of the Gospel. In the sixth century, Christianity, though too much tinctured with the superstition of the age, was introduced amongst the idolatrous Saxons. It was a benefit to many of our ancestors that the dawn of a reformation also appeared, when the doctrines of the Waldenses were brought from France; and when the intrepid Wicliffe--whose writings were of no small advantage to the revival of religion, both in his own country and in Bohemia--protested against the reigning errors. This reformation, though soon crushed, was renewed within about a century afterwards, and established under the auspices of a young monarch whose name should be remembered with the warmest gratitude,--the sixth Edward. The protestant Church was in the next reign greatly oppressed, and many were added to the noble army of martyrs; but in the following reign it acquired a stability unknown before; and notwithstanding the various difficulties with which it has struggled has flourished to this day. (T. Sims, M. A.)
Man under the culturing care of Heaven
The Eternal employs fiction, as well as fact, in the revelation of His grit thoughts to man. Hence we have in the Bible, fable, allegory, parable. Fiction, used in the way which the Bible employs it, is a valuable servant of truth. It is always pure, brief, attractive, and strikingly apt. The Divine idea flashes from it at once, as the sunbeam from the diamond. The text is one of the oldest parables, and is run in a poetic mould. It is fiction set to music. I will sing to my beloved a song touching his vineyard. Isaiahs heart, as all hearts should be, is in loving transports with the absolutely Good One, and by the law of strong affections he expresses himself in the language of bold metaphor and the music of lofty verse. Love is evermore the soul of poetry and song. This parabolic song is not only a song of love, but a song of sadness, for it expresses in stirring imagery how the Almighty had wrought in mercy to cultivate the Hebrew people into goodness, how unsuccessful He had been in all His gracious endeavours, and how terrible the judgment that would descend from His throne in consequence of their unfruitfulness. We have man under Divine culture here set before us in three aspects.
I. RECEIVING THE UTMOST ATTENTION. So much had the Eternal done for the Hebrew race in order to make them good, that He appeals to the men of Jerusalem and Judah in these remarkable words: What could have been done more to My vineyard, that I have not done in it? What has the great moral Husbandman done towards our moral culture?
1. Look at nature. There is an intelligence, a goodness, a calm, fatherly tenderness, animating, beautifying, and brightening all nature, which is, in truth, its moral soul, that silently works evermore to fashion the heart of humanity for God.
2. Look at history. There is running through all history, as its very life, an Eternal Spirit of inexorable justice and compassionating mercy, whose grand mission it is to turn the souls of men from the hideousness of crime to the beauties of virtue, from confidence in man, whose breath is in his nostrils, to trust in Him who liveth forever, from the temporary pleasures of earth to the spiritual joys of immortality.
3. What are the events of our individual life? Why is our life, from the cradle to the grave, one perpetual change of scene and state? Why the unceasing alternation of adversity and prosperity, friendship and bereavement, sorrow and joy? Rightly regarded, they are Gods implements of spiritual culture.
4. Look at mediation. Why did God send His only-begotten Son into the world? We are expressly told that it was to redeem men from all iniquity.
5. Look at the Gospel ministry. Why does the great God ordain and qualify men in every age to expound the doctrines, offer the provisions, and enforce the precepts of the Gospel of His Son? Is it not to enlighten, renovate, purify, and morally save the souls of men?
II. BECOMING WORSE THAN FRUITLESS. He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. The idea is that the Jewish people, under the culturing care of God, produced instead of good fruit the foetid, noxious fruit of the wild vine. And truly their history demonstrates this lamentable fact. From age to age they grew more and more corrupt, morally offensive, and pernicious, Thus they went on until the days of Christ. Unfruitfulness is bad enough, but pernicious fruitfulness is worse. The history of the world shows that it is a common thing for men to grow in evil under the culturing care of God. Pharaohs heart was hardened under the ministry of Moses; Saul advanced in depravity under the ministry of Samuel; and Judas became a devil under the ministry of Christ Himself. Man growing in evil under the culturing agency of God indicates two facts in human nature.
1. The spontaneity of mans action. What stronger proof can there be that our Maker has endowed us with a sovereign power of freedom than the fact that we act contrary to His purpose regarding us, and neutralise His culturing efforts?
2. The perversity of mans heart. The disposition to run counter to Heaven, which is coeval with unregenerate souls, is the root of the worlds upas. How came it? It does not belong to human nature as a constitutional element. It is our own creation, and for it eternal justice holds us responsible.
III. SINKING INTO UTTER DESOLATION (verses 5, 6). These words threaten a three-fold curse.
1. The withdrawal of Divine protection. I will take away the hedge thereof, etc. The meaning is, that He will withdraw His guardianship from the Hebrew people. This threat was fulfilled in their experience. Heaven withdrew its aegis, and the Romans entered and wrought their ruin. What thus occurred to the Jew is only a faint symbol of what must inevitably occur in the experience of all who continue to grow in evil under the culturing agency of God.
2. A cessation of culturing effort. It shall not be pruned nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns. The idea is that He would put forth no more effort to improve their condition, that He would cease to send them visions and prophets. The time must come in the case of all the unregenerate, when God will cease His endeavours to improve. His Spirit will not always strive with man.
3. The withholding of fertilising elements. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. However protected the vineyard might be, and however enriched the soil, and skilfully pruned the branches, if no rain come, the whole will soon be ruined. What a terrible picture of a soul is this!--here is a soul from which its great Father has withdrawn all protection, ceased all culturing efforts, and withholds all fertilising influences! Here is hell. This subject starts many solemn reflections, and has many practical uses.
(1) It unfolds the mercifulness of God. How infinite His condescending love in taking this little world under His culturing care.
(2) It reveals the morality of life. Man is a moral being, and everything here connected with his life has a moral purpose, and a moral bearing.
(3) It explains all human improvement. God, as the great Husbandman, is here building fences, digging and pruning, and thus helping on the world to moral fruitfulness.
(4) It urges self-scrutiny. In what state is our vineyard?
(5) It suggests the grand finale of the worlds history. There is a harvest marching up the steeps of time. (Homilist.)
Great opportunities
I. AS ABUNDANTLY POSSESSED. The vineyard here is represented--
1. As in a salubrious position. In a very fruitful hill.
2. As subject to culturing care. Canaan was the fruitful hill; the theocratic government was the fence built around it. What rare opportunities has every man amongst us! Bibles in our houses, churches near our dwellings, preachers of every type of mind, class of thought, and oratorio power.
II. AS SHAMEFULLY ABUSED. When I looked that it should bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes.
III. AS UTTERLY LOST. (Homilist.)
A history of the Jews
We have in this parable a summing up of the history of Gods chosen people.
I. GODS CARE FOR THEM--their privileges.
II. GODS GRIEF OVER THEM--their Sin and unfaithfulness.
III. GODS SENTENCE UPON THEM--their punishment. (C. J. Ridgeway.)
Human life in parable
I. Here is human life PLACED IN A GOOD SITUATION. In a very fruitful hill.
II. Here is human life AS THE SUBJECT OF DETAILED CARE (Isa_5:2). He stood back and waited like a husbandman. The vineyard was upon a hill, and therefore could not be ploughed. How blessed are those vineyards that are cultivated by the hand! There is a magnetism in the hand of love that you cannot have in an iron plough. He gathered out the stones thereof one by one . . . He fenced . . . He built . . . He made a wine press. It is hand made. There is a peculiar delight in rightly accepting the handling of God. We are not cultivated by the great ploughs of the constellations and the laws of nature; we are handled by the Living One, our names are engraven on the palms of His hands: The right hand of the Lord doeth gloriously. Human life, then, is the subject of detailed care; everything, how minute soever, is done as if it were the only thing to be done; every man feels that there is a care directed to him which might belong to an only son.
III. Human life is next regarded AS THE OBJECT OF A JUST EXPECTATION. He looked that it should bring forth grapes. Had, He not a right to do so? Is there not a sequence of events? When men sow certain seed, have they not a right to look for a certain crop? When they pass through certain processes in education, or in commerce, or in statesmanship, have they not a right to expect that the end should correspond with the beginning? Who likes to lose all his care?
IV. Human life AS THE OCCASION OF A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT. It brought forth wild grapes. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Life given for culture
It is not the best at the first; it has to be fenced, and the stones are to be taken out, and the choice vine is to be planted, and the tower is to be set in the midst of it, and the wine press is to be built therein. The child is but the beginning; the man should be the cultivated result. Culture is bestowed for fruit. Culture is not given for mere decoration, ornamentation, or for the purpose of exciting attention, and invoking and securing applause; the meaning of culture, ploughing, digging, sowing is--fruit, good fruit, usable fruit, fruit for the healing of the nations. The fruit for which culture is bestowed is moral. God looked for judgment and for righteousness. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Gods expectation of fruit
I. THE MOTIVES OR REASONS INDUCING US TO FRUITFULNESS.
1. Every creature in its kind is fruitful. The poorest creature God hath made is enabled, with some gift, to imitate the goodness and bounty of the Creator, and to yield something from itself to the use and benefit of others Shall not every creature be a witness against man, and rise up in judgment to condemn him, if he be fruitless?
2. The fruitfulness of a Christian is the groundwork of all true prosperity.
3. If we be fruitful, bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit, there is no law against us (Gal_5:22-23).
4. The circumstance of time calls upon us to bring forth the fruits of obedience. Forasmuch as the Lord hath year by year, for so long succession of years, sought for fruit of us and found none, it is now high time to bring forth plenty.
5. If all this will not serve to make us fruitful, that which our Saviour saith Joh_15:2; Joh_15:6, should awaken us.
II. SOME PROFITABLE MEANS THAT MUST BE USED TO MAKE US GROW MORE FRUITFUL.
1. See thou be removed out of thy natural soil, and be engrafted into another stock.
2. See thou plant thyself by the running brooks.
3. See thou labour for humility and tenderness of heart. The ground which is hard and strong is unfit for fruit.
4. Beware of overshadowing thy heart by any sinful lust, whereby the warm beams of the Sun of Righteousness are kept from it.
5. A special care must be had to the root that that grow well Faith is the radical grace.
6. We must be earnest with the Lord, that He would make us fruitful.
III. THE NATURE AND QUALITY OF THAT FRUIT WHICH WE MUST BRING FORTH.
1. Proper. It must be thy own.
2. Kindly, resembling the Author, who is the Spirit of grace.
3. Timely and seasonable (Psa_1:3).
4. Ripe.
5. A fifth property of good fruit is universalities. Fruits of the first and second table, of holiness towards God and righteousness towards man. Fruits inward and outward.
6. Constant. (N. Rogers.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1
CHAPTER III
THE VINEYARD OF THE LORD,
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OR TRUE PATRIOTISM THE CONSCIENCE OF OUR COUNTRYS SINS
735 B.C.
Isaiah 5; Isaiah 9:8 - Isaiah 10:4
THE prophecy contained in these chapters belongs, as we have seen, to the same early period of Isaiahs career as chapters 2-4, about the time when Ahaz ascended the throne after the long and successful reigns of his father and grandfather, when the kingdom of Judah seemed girt with strength and filled with wealth, but the men were corrupt and the women careless, and the earnest of approaching judgment was already given in the incapacity of the weak and woman-ridden king. Yet although this new prophecy issues from the same circumstances as its predecessors, it implies these circumstances a little more developed. The same social evils are treated, but by a hand with a firmer grasp of them. The same principles are emphasised-the righteousness of Jehovah and His activity in judgment - but the form of judgment of which Isaiah had spoken before in general terms looms nearer, and before the end of the prophecy we get a view at close quarters of the Assyrian ranks.
Besides, opposition has arisen to the prophets teaching. We saw that the obscurities and inconsistencies of chapters 2-4 are due to the fact that that prophecy represents several stages of experience through which Isaiah passed before he gained his final convictions. But his countrymen, it appears, have now had time to turn on these convictions and call them in question: it is necessary for Isaiah to vindicate them. The difference, then, between these two sets of prophecies, dealing with the same things, is that in the former (chapters 2-4), we have the obscure and tortuous path of a conviction struggling to light in the prophets own experience; here, in chapter 5, we have its careful array in the light and before the people.
The point of Isaiahs teaching against which opposition was directed was of course its main point, that God was about to abandon Judah. This must have appeared to the popular religion of the day as the rankest heresy. To the Jews the honour of Jehovah was bound up with the inviolability of Jerusalem and the prosperity of Judah. But Isaiah knew Jehovah to be infinitely more concerned for the purity of His people than for their prosperity. He had seen the Lord "exalted in righteousness" above those national and earthly interests, with which vulgar men exclusively identified His will. Did the people appeal to the long time Jehovah had graciously led them for proof that He would not abandon them now? To Isaiah that gracious leading was but for righteousness sake, and that God might make His own a holy people. Their history, so full of the favours of the Almighty, did not teach Isaiah, as it did the common prophets of his time, the lesson of Israels political security, but the far different one of their religious responsibility. To him it only meant what Amos had already put in those startling words, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities." Now Isaiah delivered this doctrine at a time when it brought him the hostility of mens passions as well as of their opinions. Judah was arming for war. Syria and Ephraim were marching upon her. To threaten his country with ruin in such an hour was to run the risk of suffering from popular fury as a traitor as well as from priestly prejudice as a heretic. The strain of the moment is felt in the strenuousness of the prophecy. Chapter 5, with its appendix, exhibits more grasp and method than its predecessors. Its literary form is finished, its feeling clear. There is a tenderness in the beginning of it, an inexorableness in the end, and an eagerness all through which stamp the chapter as Isaiahs final appeal to his countrymen at this period of his career.
The chapter is a noble piece of patriotism-one of the noblest of a race who, although for the greater part of their history without a fatherland, have contributed more brilliantly than perhaps any other to the literature of patriotism, and that simply because, as Isaiah here illustrates, patriotism was to their prophets identical with religious privilege and responsibility. Isaiah carries this to its bitter end. Other patriots have wept to sing their countrys woes; Isaiahs burden is his peoples guilt. To others an invasion of their fatherland by its enemies has been the motive to rouse by song or speech their countrymen to repel it. Isaiah also hears the tramp of the invader; but to him is permitted no ardour of defence, and his message to his countrymen is that they must succumb, for the invasion is irresistible and of the very judgment of God. How much it cost the prophet to deliver such a message we may see from those few verses of it in which his heart is not altogether silenced by his conscience. The sweet description of Judah as a vineyard, and the touching accents that break through the roll of denunciation with such phrases as "My people are gone away into captivity unawares," tell us how the prophets love of country is struggling with his duty to a righteous God. The course of feeling throughout the prophecy is very striking. The tenderness of the opening lyric seems ready to flow into gentle pleading with the whole people. But as the prophet turns to particular classes and their sins his mood changes to indignation, the voice settles down to judgment; till when it issues upon that clear statement of the coming of the Northern hosts every trace of emotion has left it, and the sentences ring out as unfaltering as the tramp of the armies they describe.
I. THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD
{Isa_5:1-7}
Isaiah adopts the resource of every misunderstood and unpopular teacher, and seeks to turn the flank of his peoples prejudices by an attack in parable on their sympathies. Did they stubbornly believe it impossible for God to abandon a State He had so long and so carefully fostered? Let them judge from an analogous case in which they were all experts. In a picture of great beauty Isaiah describes a vineyard upon one of the sunny promontories visible from Jerusalem. Every care had been given it of which an experienced vinedresser could think, but it brought forth only wild grapes. The vinedresser himself is introduced, and appeals to the men of Judah and Jerusalem to judge between him and his vineyard. He gets their assent that all had been done which could be done, and fortified with that resolves to abandon the vineyard. "I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor digged, but there shall come up briers and thorns." Then the stratagem comes out, the speaker drops the tones of a human cultivator, and in the omnipotence of the Lord of heaven he is heard to say, "I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it." This diversion upon their sympathies having succeeded, the prophet scarcely needs to charge the peoples prejudices in face. His point has been evidently carried. "For the vineyard of Jehovah 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."
The lesson enforced by Isaiah is just this, that in a peoples civilisation there lie the deepest responsibilities, for that is neither more nor less than their cultivation by God; and the question for a people is not how secure does this render them, nor what does it count for glory, but how far is it rising towards the intentions of its Author? Does it produce those fruits of righteousness for which alone God cares to set apart and cultivate the peoples? On this depends the question whether the civilisation is secure, as well as the right of the people to enjoy and feel proud of it. There cannot be true patriotism without sensitiveness to this, for however rich be the elements that compose the patriots temper, as piety towards the past, ardour of service for the present, love of liberty, delight in natural beauty, and gratitude for Divine favour, so rich a temper will grow rancid without the salt of conscience; and the richer the temper is, the greater must be the proportion of that salt. All prophets and poets of patriotism have been moralists and satirists as well. From Demosthenes to Tourgenieff. from Dante to Mazzini, from Milton to Russell Lowell, from Burns to Heine, one cannot recall any great patriot who has not known how to use the scourge as well as the trumpet. Many opportunities will present themselves to us of illustrating Isaiahs orations by the letters and speeches of Cromwell, who of moderns most resembles the statesman-prophet of Judah; but nowhere does the resemblance become so close as when we lay a prophecy like this of Jehovahs vineyard by the side of the speeches in which the Lord Protector exhorted the Commons of England, although it was the hour of his and. their triumph, to address themselves to their sins.
So, then, the patriotism of all great men has carried a conscience for their countrys sins. But while this is always more or less a burden to the true patriot, there are certain periods in which his care for his country ought to be this predominantly, and need be little else. In a period like our own, for instance, of political security and fashionable religion, what need is there in patriotic displays of any other kind? but how much for patriotism of this kind-of men who will uncover the secret sins, however loathsome, and declare the hypocrisies, however powerful, of the social life of the people! These are the patriots we need in times of peace; and as it is more difficult to rouse a torpid people to their sins than to lead a roused one against their enemies, and harder to face a whole people with the support only of conscience than to defy many nations if you but have your own at your back, so these patriots of peace are more to be honoured than those of war. But there is one kind of patriotism more arduous and honourable still. It is that which Isaiah displays here, who cannot add to his conscience hope or even pity, who must hail his countrys enemies for his countrys good, and recite the long roll of Gods favours to his nation only to emphasise the justice of His abandonment of them.
II. THE WILD GRAPES OF JUDAH
{Isa_5:8-24}
The wild grapes which Isaiah saw in the vineyard of the Lord he catalogues in a series of Woes (Isa_5:8-24), fruits all of them of love of money and love of wine. They are abuse of the soil (Isa_5:8-10, Isa_5:17), a giddy luxury which has taken to drink (Isa_5:11-16), a moral blindness and headlong audacity of sin which habitual avarice and drunkenness soon develop (Isa_5:18-21), and, again, a greed of drink and money-mens perversion of their strength to wine, and of their opportunities of justice to the taking of bribes (Isa_5:22-24). These are the features of corrupt civilisation not only in Judah, and the voice that deplores them cannot speak without rousing others very clamant to the modern conscience. It is with remarkable persistence that in every civilisation the two main passions of the human heart, love of wealth and love of pleasure, the instinct to gather and the instinct to squander, have sought precisely these two forms denounced by Isaiah in which to work their social havoc-appropriation of the soil and indulgence in strong drink. Every civilised community develops sooner or later its land-question and its liquor-question. "Questions" they are called by the superficial opinion that all difficulties may be overcome by the cleverness of men; yet problems through which there cries for remedy so vast a proportion of our poverty, crime, and madness, are something worse than "questions." They are huge sins, and require not merely the statesmans wit, but all the patience and zeal of which a nations conscience is capable. It is in this that the force of Isaiahs treatment lies. We feel he is not facing questions of State, but sins of men. He has nothing to tell us of what he considers the best system of land tenure, but he enforces the principle that in the ease with which land may be absorbed by one person the natural covetousness of the human heart has a terrible opportunity for working ruin upon society. "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land." We know from Micah that the actual process which Isaiah condemns was carried out with the most cruel evictions and disinheritances. Isaiah does not touch on its methods, but exposes its effects on the country-depopulation and barrenness, -and emphasises its religious significance. "Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without an inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah Then shall lambs. feed as in their pasture, and strangers shall devour the ruins of the fat ones"-i.e., of the luxurious landowners (Isa_5:9, Isa_5:10, Isa_5:17). And in one of those elliptic statements by which he often startles us with the sudden sense that God Himself is acquainted with all our affairs, and takes His own interest in them, Isaiah adds, "All this was whispered to me by Jehovah: In mine ears-the Lord of hosts" (Isa_5:9).
During recent agitations in our own country one has often seen the "land laws of the Bible" held forth by some thoughtless demagogue as models for land tenure among ourselves; as if a system which worked well with a small tribe in a land they had all entered on equal footing, and where there was no opportunity for the industry of the people except in pasture and in tillage, could possibly be applicable to a vastly larger and more complex population, with different traditions and very different social circumstances. Isaiah says nothing about the peculiar land laws of his people. He lays down principles, and these are principles valid in every civilisation. God has made the land, not to feed the pride of the few, but the natural hunger of the many, and it is His will that the most be got out of a countrys soil for the people of the country. Whatever be the system of land-tenure-and while all are more or less liable to abuse, it is the duty of a people to agitate for that which will be least liable-if it is taken advantage of by individuals to satisfy their own cupidity, then God will take account of them. There is a responsibility which the State cannot enforce, and the neglect of which cannot be punished by any earthly law, but all the more will God see to it. A nations treatment of their land is not always prominent as a question which demands the attention of public reformers; but it ceaselessly has interest for God, who ever holds individuals to answer for it. The land-question is ultimately a religious question. For the management of their land the whole nation is responsible to God, but especially those who own or manage estates. This is a sacred office. When one not only remembers the nature of land-how it is an element of life, so that if a man abuse the soil it is as if he poisoned the air or darkened the heavens-but appreciates also the multitude of personal relations which the landowner or factor holds in his hand-the peace of homes, the continuity of local traditions, the physical health, the social fearlessness and frankness, and the thousand delicate associations which their habitations entwine about the hearts of men-one feels that to all who possess or manage land is granted an opportunity of patriotism and piety open to few, a ministry less honourable and sacred than none other committed by God to man for his fellow-men.
After the land-sin Isaiah hurls his second Woe upon the drink-sin, and it is a heavier woe than the first. With fatal persistence the luxury of every civilisation has taken to drink; and of all the indictments brought by moralists against nations, that which they reserve for drunkenness is, as here, the most heavily weighted. The crusade against drink is not the novel thing that many imagine who observe only its late revival among ourselves. In ancient times there was scarcely a State in which prohibitive legislation of the most stringent kind was not attempted, and generally carried out with a thoroughness more possible under despots than where, as with us, the slow consent of public opinion is necessary. A horror of strong drink has in every age possessed those who from their position as magistrates or prophets have been able to follow for any distance the drifts of social life. Isaiah exposes as powerfully as ever any of them did in what the peculiar fatality of drinking lies. Wine is a mocker by nothing more than by the moral incredulity which it produces, enabling men to hide from themselves the spiritual and material effects of over-indulgence in it. No one who has had to do with persons slowly falling from moderate to immoderate drinking can mistake Isaiahs meaning when he says, "They regard not the work of the Lord; neither have they considered the operation of His hands." Nothing kills the conscience like steady drinking to a little excess; and religion, even while the conscience is alive, acts on it only as an opiate. It is not, however, with the symptoms of drink in individuals so much as with its aggregate effects on the nation that Isaiah is concerned. So prevalent is excessive drinking, so entwined with the social customs of the country and many powerful interests, that it is extremely difficult to rouse public opinion to its effects. And "so they go into captivity for lack of knowledge." Temperance reformers are often blamed for the strength of their language, but they may shelter themselves behind Isaiah. As he pictures it, the national destruction caused by drink is complete. It is nothing less than the peoples captivity, and we know what that meant to an Israelite. It affects all classes: "Their honourable men are famished, and their multitude parched with thirst. The mean man is bowed down, and the great man is humbled." But the want and ruin of this earth are not enough to describe it. The appetite of hell itself has to be enlarged to suffice for the consumption of the spoils of strong drink. "Therefore hell hath enlarged her desire and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth among them, descend into it." The very appetite of hell has to be enlarged! Does it not truly seem as if the wild and wanton waste of drink were preventable, as if it were not, as many are ready to sneer, the inevitable evil of mens hearts choosing this form of issue, but a superfluous audacity of sin, which the devil himself did not desire or tempt men to? It is this feeling of the infernal gratuitousness of most of the drink-evil-the conviction that here hell would be quiet if only she were not stirred up by the extraordinarily wanton provocatives that society and the State offer to excessive drinking- which compels temperance reformers at the present day to isolate drunkenness and make it the object of a special crusade. Isaiahs strong figure has lost none of its strength today. When our judges tell us from the bench that nine-tenths of pauperism and crime are caused by drink, and our physicians that if only irregular tippling were abolished half the current sickness of the land would cease, and our statesmen that the ravages of strong drink are equal to those of the historical scourges of war, famine, and pestilence combined, surely to swallow such a glut of spoil the appetite of hell must have been still more enlarged, and the mouth of hell made yet wider.
The next three Woes are upon different aggravations of that moral perversity which the prophet has already traced to strong drink. In the first of these it is better to read, draw punishment near with cords of vanity, than draw iniquity. Then we have a striking antithesis-the drunkards mocking Isaiah over their cups with the challenge, as if it would not be taken up, "Let Jehovah make speed, and hasten His work of judgment, that we may see it," while all the time they themselves were dragging that judgment near, as with cart-ropes, by their persistent diligence in evil. This figure of sinners jeering at the approach of a calamity while they actually wear the harness of its carriage is very striking. But the Jews are not only unconscious of judgment, they are confused as to the very principles of morality: "Who call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"
In his fifth Woe the prophet attacks a disposition to which his scorn gives no peace throughout his ministry. If these sensualists had only confined themselves to their sensuality they might have been left alone; but with that intellectual bravado which is equally born with "Dutch courage" of drink, they interferred in the conduct of the State, and prepared arrogant policies of alliance and war that were the distress of the sober-minded prophet all his days. "Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight."
In his last Woe Isaiah returns to the drinking habits of the upper classes, from which it would appear that among the judges even of Judah there were "six-bottle men." They sustained theft extravagance by subsidies, which we trust were unknown to the mighty men of wine who once filled the seats of justice in our own country. "They justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him." All these sinners, dead through their rejection of the law of Jehovah of hosts and the word of the Holy One of Israel, shall be like to the stubble, fit only for burning, and their blossom as the dust of the rotten tree.
III. THE ANGER OF THE LORD
{Isa_5:25; Isaiah 9:8 - Isaiah 10:4; Isa 5:26-30}
This indictment of the various sins of the people occupies the whole of the second part of the oration. But a third part is now added, in which the prophet catalogues the judgments of the Lord upon them, each of these closing with the weird refrain, "For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still." The complete catalogue is usually obtained by inserting between the 25th and 26th verses of chapter 5 {Isa_5:25-26}. the long passage from chapter 9, verse 8, to chapter 10, verse 4. It is quite true that as far as chapter 5 itself is concerned it does not need this insertion; Isa_9:8-21; Isa_10:1-4 is decidedly out of place where it now lies. Its paragraphs end with the same refrain as closes Isa_5:25, which forms, besides, a natural introduction to them, while Isa_5:26-30 form as natural a conclusion. The latter verses describe an Assyrian invasion, and it was always in an Assyrian invasion that Isaiah foresaw the final calamity of Judah. We may, then, subject to further light on the exceedingly obscure subject of the arrangement of Isaiahs prophecies, follow some of the leading critics, and place Isa_9:8-21; Isa_10:1-4 between verses 25-26 of chapter 5; and the more we examine them the more we shall be satisfied with our arrangement, for strung together in this order they form one of the most impressive series of scenes which even an Isaiah has given us.
From these scenes Isaiah has spared nothing that is terrible in history or nature, and it is not one of the least of the arguments for putting them together that their intensity increases to a climax. Earthquakes, armed raids, a great battle, and the slaughter of a people; prairie and forest fires, civil strife and the famine fever, that feeds upon itself; another battle-field, with its cringing groups of captives and heaps of slain; the resistless tide of a great invasion; and then, for final prospect, a desolate land by the sound of a hungry sea, and the light is darkened in the clouds thereof. The elements of nature and the elemental passions of man have been let loose together; and we follow the violent floods, remembering that it is sin that has burst the gates of the universe, and given the tides of hell full course through it. Over the storm and battle there comes booming like the storm-bell the awful refrain, "For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still." It is poetry of the highest order, but in him who reads it with a conscience mere literary sensations are sobered by the awe of some of the most profound moral phenomena of life. The persistence of Divine wrath, the long-lingering effects of sin in a nations history, mans abuse of sorrow and his defiance of an angry Providence, are the elements of this great drama. Those who are familiar with "King Lear" will recognise these elements, and observe how similarly the ways of Providence and the conduct of men are represented there and here.
What Isaiah unfolds, then. is a series of calamities that have overtaken the people of Israel. It is impossible for us to identify every one of them with a particular event in Israels history otherwise known to us. Some it is not difficult to recognise; but the prophet passes in a perplexing way from Judah to Ephraim and Ephraim to Judah, and in one case, where he represents Samaria as attacked by Syria and the Philistines, he goes back to a period at some distance from his own. There are also passages, as for instance Isa_10:1-4, in which we are unable to decide whether he describes a present punishment or threatens a future one. But his moral purpose, at least, is plain. He will show how often Jehovah has already spoken to His people by calamity, and because they have remained hardened under these warnings, how there now remains possible only the last, worst blow of an Assyrian invasion. Isaiah is justifying his threat of so unprecedented and extreme a punishment for Gods people as overthrow by this Northern people, who had just appeared upon Judahs political horizon. God, he tells Israel, has tried everything short of this, and it has failed; now only this remains, and this shall not fail. The prophets purpose, therefore, being not an accurate historical recital, but moral impressiveness, he gives us a more or less ideal description of former calamities, mentioning only so much as to allow us to recognise here and there that it is actual facts which he uses for his purpose of condemning Israel to captivity, and vindicating Israels God in bringing that captivity near. The passage thus forms a parallel to that in Amos, with its similar refrain: "Yet ye have not returned unto Me, saith the Lord," {Amo_4:6-12} and only goes farther than that earlier prophecy in indicating that the instruments of the Lords final judgment are to be the Assyrians.
Five great calamities, says Isaiah, have fallen on Israel and left them hardened:
1st, earthquake; {Isa_5:25}
2d, loss of territory; {Isa_9:8-12}
3d, war and a decisive defeat; {Isa_9:13-17}
4th, internal anarchy; {Isa_9:18-21}
5th, the near prospect of captivity. {Isa_10:1-4}
1. THE EARTHQUAKE.-Amos {Isa_5:25} closes his series withan earthquake; Isaiah begins with one. It may be the same convulsion they describe, or may not. Although the skirts of Palestine both to the east and west frequently tremble to these disturbances, an earthquake in Palestine itself, up on the high central ridge of the land, is very rare. Isaiah vividly describes its awful simplicity and suddenness. "The Lord stretched forth His hand and smote, and the hills shook, and their carcases were like offal in the midst of the streets." More words are not needed, because there was nothing more to describe. The Lord lifted His hand; the hills seemed for a moment to topple over, and when the living recovered from the shock there lay the dead, flung like refuse about the streets.
2. THE LOSS OF TERRITORY.-So {Isa_9:8-21} awful a calamity, in which the dying did not die out of sight nor-fall huddled together on some far off battle-field, but the whole land was strewn with her slain, ought to have left indelible impression on the people. But it did not. The Lords own word had been in it for Jacob and Israel, {Isa_9:8} "that the people might know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria." But unhumbled they turned in the stoutness of their hearts, saying, when the earthquake had passed: "The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stones"; the "sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." Calamity did not make this people thoughtful; they felt God only to endeavour to forget Him. Therefore He visited them the second time. They did not feel the Lord shaking their land, so He sent their enemies to steal it from them: "the Syrians before and the Philistines behind; and they devour Israel with open mouth." What that had been for appalling suddenness this was for lingering and harassing-guerilla warfare, armed raids, the land eaten away bit by bit. "Yet the people do not return unto Him that smote them, neither seek they the Lord of hosts."
3. WAR AND DEFEAT.-The {Isa_9:13-17} next consequent calamity passed from the land to the people themselves. A great battle is described, in which the nation is dismembered in one day. War and its horrors are told, and the apparent want of Divine pity and discrimination which they imply is explained. Israel has been led into these disasters by the folly of their leaders, whom Isaiah therefore singles out for blame. "For they that lead these people cause them to err, and they that are led of them are destroyed." But the real horror of war is that it falls not upon its authors, that its victims are not statesmen, but the beauty of a countrys youth, the helplessness of the widow and orphan. Some question seems to have been stirred by this in Isaiahs heart. He asks, Why does the Lord not rejoice in the young men of His people? Why has He no pity for widow and orphan, that He thus sacrifices them to the sin of the rulers? It is because the whole nation shares the rulers guilt; "every one is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly." As ruler so people, is a truth Isaiah frequently asserts, but never with such grimness as here. War brings out, as nothing else does, the solidarity of a people in guilt.
4. INTERNAL ANARCHY.-Even {Isa_9:18-21} yet the people did not repent; their calamities only drove them to further wickedness. The prophets eyes are opened to the awful fact that Gods wrath is but the blast that fans mens hot sins to flame. This is one of those two or three awful scenes in history, in the conflagration of which we cannot tell what is human sin and what Divine judgment. There is a panic wickedness, sin spreading like mania, as if men were possessed by supernatural powers. The physical metaphors of the prophet are evident: a forest or prairie fire, and the consequent famine, whose fevered victims feed upon themselves. And no less evident are the political facts which the prophet employs these metaphors to describe. It is the anarchy which has beset more than one corrupt and unfortunate people, when their mis-leaders have been overthrown: the anarchy in which each faction seeks to slaughter out the rest. Jealousy and distrust awake the lust for blood, rage seizes the people as fire the forest, "and no man spareth his brother." We have had modern instances of all this; these scenes form a true description of some days of the French Revolution, and are even a truer description of the civil war that broke out in Paris after her late siege.
"If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences, I will come,
Humanity must perforce prey on itself
Like monsters of the deep."
5. THE THREAT OF CAPTIVITY.-Turning {Isa_10:1-4} now from the past, and from the fate of Samaria, with which it would appear he has been more particularly engaged, the prophet addresses his own countrymen in Judah, and paints the future for them. It is not a future in which there is any hope. The day of their visitation also will surely come, and the prophet sees it close in the darkest night of which a Jewish heart could think-the night of captivity. Where, he asks his unjust countrymen-where "will ye then flee for help? and where will you leave your glory?" Cringing among the captives, lying dead beneath heaps of dead-that is to be your fate, who will have turned so, often and then so finally from God. When exactly the prophet thus warned his countrymen of captivity we do not know, but the warning, though so real, produced neither penitence in men nor pity in God. "For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still."
6. THE ASSYRIAN INVASION.-The {Isa_5:26-30} prophet is, therefore, free to explain that cloud which has appeared far away on the northern horizon. Gods hand of judgment is still uplifted over Judah, and it is that hand which summons the cloud. The Assyrians are coming in answer to Gods signal, and they are coming as a flood, to leave nothing but ruin and distress behind them. No description by Isaiah is more majestic than this one, in which Jehovah, who has exhausted every nearer means of converting His people, lifts His undrooping arm with a "flag to the nations that are far off, and hisses" or whistles "for them from the end of the earth. And, behold, they come with speed, swiftly: there is no weary one nor straggler among them; none slumbers nor sleeps; nor loosed is the girdle of his loins, nor broken the latchet of his shoes; whose arrows are sharpened, and all their bows bent; their horses hoofs are like the dint, and their wheels like the whirlwind: a roar have they like the lions, and they roar like young lions; yea, they growl and grasp the prey, and carry it off, and there is none to deliver. And they growl upon him that day like the growling of the sea; and if one looks to the land, behold dark and distress, and the light is darkened in the cloudy heaven."
Thus Isaiah leaves Judah to await her doom. But the tones of his weird refrain awaken in our hearts some thoughts which will not let his message go from us just yet.
It will ever be a question, whether men abuse more their sorrows or their joys; but no earnest soul can doubt, which of these abuses is the more fatal. To sin in the one case is to yield to a temptation; to sin in the other is to resist a Divine grace. Sorrow is Gods last message to man; it is God speaking in emphasis. He who abuses it shows that he can shut his ears when God speaks loudest. Therefore heartlessness or impenitence after sorrow is more dangerous than intemperance in joy; its results are always more tragic. Now Isaiah points out that mens abuse of sorrow is twofold. Men abuse sorrow by mistaking it, and they abuse sorrow by defying it.
Men abuse sorrow by mistaking it, when they see in it nothing but a penal or expiatory force. To many men sorrow is what his devotions were to Louis XI, which having religiously performed, he felt the more brave to sin. So with the Samaritans, who said in the stoutness of their hearts, "The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." To speak in this way is happy, but heathenish. It is to call sorrow "bad luck"; it is to hear no voice of God in it, saying, "Be pure; be humble; lean upon Me." This disposition springs from a vulgar conception of God, as of a Being of no permanence in character, easily irritated but relieved by a burst of passion, smartly punishing His people and then leaving them to themselves. It is a temper which says, "God is angry, let us wait a little; God is appeased, let us go ahead again." Over against such vulgar views of a Deity with a temper Isaiah unveils the awful majesty of God in holy wrath: "For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still." How grim and savage does it appear to our eyes till we understand the thoughts of the sinners to whom it was revealed! God cannot dispel the cowardly thought, that He is anxious only to punish, except by letting His heavy hand abide till it purify also. The permanence of Gods wrath is thus an ennobling, not a stupefying doctrine.
Men also abuse sorrow by defying it, but the end of this is madness. "It forms the greater part of the tragedy of King Lear, that the aged monarch, though he has given his throne away, retains his imperiousness of heart, and continues to exhibit a senseless, if sometimes picturesque, pride and selfishness in face of misfortune. Even when he is overthrown he must still command; he fights against the very elements; he is determined to be at least the master of his own sufferings and destiny. But for this the necessary powers fail him; his life thus disordered terminates in madness. It was only by such an affliction that a character like his could be brought to repentance; to humility, which is the parent of true love, and that love in him could be purified. Hence the melancholy close of that tragedy." As Shakespeare has dealt with the king, so Isaiah with the people; he also shows us sorrow when it is defied bringing forth madness. On so impious a height mans brain grows dizzy, and he falls into that terrible abyss which is not, as some imagine, hell, but Gods last purgatory. Shakespeare brings shattered Lear out of it, and Isaiah has a remnant of the people to save.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4 Isa_5:1-7. Now will I sing, &c.
THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD
Isa_5:1-7. Now will I sing, &c.
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I. The Privileges conferred on the Jewish nation (Isa_5:2-3). It would be vain and useless to attempt, as some have done, to find in the privileges of the Jews an exact counterpart to the various items here specified concerning this “vineyard.” For example, Jerome regards the fencing of the vineyard as symbolical of the protection of the Jews by the angels; the gathering out of the stones, the removal of the idols; the tower, the temple erected in Jerusalem; the wine-press, the altar [583] To seek thus for minute analogies is at once to destroy the oratorical force and the simplicity of the parable. Rather let us lay hold of its leading truths. The prophet desired to remind the Jews that they had received extraordinary privileges from God; consequently he employed figures calculated to impress his hearers with that truth; and he does not fail to specify every particular which those acquainted with a vineyard would expect, if it were one from which a copious supply of choice fruit might be reasonably expected.
1. The choice which God made of the Jews as a nation was the first and fundamental privilege which He conferred upon them.
2. Having chosen them, God revealed Himself to them as clearly as was then possible through the symbolism of the Mosaic Law. Through its statutes and ceremonies were shadowed forth the great truths of His holiness, His mercy, His sanctifying grace, and the Sacrifice which in the fulness of time was to be offered for the sin of the world (Rom_3:1-2).
3. In addition to the Law, God gave to His people the inestimable help of Prophetical Teaching, to assist them to understand its meaning, and to stimulate them to keep it with full purpose of heart.
[583] “The house of Israel” (beth Yisrâel) was the whole nation, which is also represented in other passages under the same figure of a vineyard (Isa_27:2, sqq.; Psalms 80, &c). But as Isaiah was prophet in Judah, he applies the figure more particularly to Judah, which was called Jehovah’s favourite plantation, inasmuch as it was the seat of the Divine sanctuary and of the Davidic kingdom. This makes it easy enough to interpret the different parts of the simile employed. The fat mountain horn was Canaan, flowing with milk and honey (Exo_15:17); the digging of the vineyard, and clearing it of stones, was the clearing of Canaan from its former heathen inhabitants (Psa_44:3); the sorek-vines were the holy priests and prophets and kings of Israel of the earlier and better times (Jer_2:21); the defensive and ornamental tower in the midst of the vineyard was Jerusalem as the royal city, with Zion the royal fortress (Mic_4:8); the winepress-trough was the temple, where, according to Psa_36:8, the wine of heavenly pleasures flowed in streams, and from which, according to Psalms 42 and many other passages, the thirst of the soul might all be quenched. The grazing and treading down are explained in Jer_5:10; Jer_12:10.—Delitsch.
I believe that in a poetical allegory there is always more or less of allusion to the details of that which is allegorised; but it is only allusion,—to be realised by the imagination, rather than by the understanding, of the reader, as well as the poet. The several images are parts of a picture, which must be contemplated as a picture, and its meaning is to enter into the mind through the imagination. Still, a matter-of-fact commentator, like Vitringa, deeply imbued with the spirit of his author, will sometimes greatly help his reader’s imagination by his minute analysis; and I think this is the case in his explanation of the details of this description of the vineyard. “A vineyard” consists of vines planted for the sake of their fruit: the Hebrew nation with its tribes, its families, and its persons, was such a vineyard, appointed to bring forth the fruits of personal and social religion and virtue,—holiness, righteousness, and love to God and man: this nation was established in a land flowing with milk and honey, endowed with all natural advantages, all circumstances which could favour inward life by outward prosperity; and the grace and favour of Jehovah, and the influences of His Spirit, always symbolised by oil, were continually causing it to be fruitful. “And He fenced it,”—the arm of the LORD of hosts, employing kings and heroes, was its defence against all enemies; its institutions were fitted to preserve internal order, and to prevent the admixture of evil from without, with the chosen and separated nation; and its territory was marked out and protected by natural boundaries in a noticeable manner. “Gathered out the stones,”—the heathen nations, and the stocks and stones they worshipped. “And planted it with the choicest vine,”—a nation of the noble stock of the patriarchs, and chosen and cultivated by the Lord of the vineyard, with especial care, for His own use. “And built a tower in it,”—namely, Jerusalem—for the protection and superintendence of the vineyard, as well as to be its farmhouse, so to speak. “And also made a wine-press therein,”—where the wine-press seems to point to the same idea as the sending the servants to receive the fruit, in our Lord’s modification of this parable: lawgivers, kings, and judges, the temple with its priesthood and ordinances, and the schools of the prophets, were the appointed means for pressing out and receiving the wine—the spiritual virtues and graces of the vineyard. And the end is, that “He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.”—Strachey, pp. 62, 63.
II. The consequent obligations under which the Jews were laid. From the vineyard, for which the great Husbandman had done so much, He naturally looked for fruit. The fruits which the prophet specifies as being required by God from the Jews correspond precisely with their privileges (Isa_5:7). He had given them a code of laws by which their actions were to be guided, and had impressed upon them the duty of doing to others as they would be done to. Now He looked for the fruits of justice and righteousness. It was a reasonable demand, the lowest that could have been made. Yet even this demand was not met.
III. The Judgment which God designed to bring upon them (Isa_5:6-7). As we objected to the attempt to find exact counterparts between the various privileges of the Jews and the labours which had been bestowed upon the vineyard, so we set aside as needless all attempts to discover parallels between the various items of the threatening against the vineyard and the judgments by which the Jews were visited. All that the prophet means to say is this, that the privileges which the Jews enjoyed pre-eminently above all the other nations God would take from them, and they should be reduced to the level of their neighbours. The removal of those privileges was itself the heaviest judgment that could have befallen them.
PRACTICAL LESSON.—Where there is privilege there is obligation.
1. You who are Christians are responsible for your privileges. Consider how great they are: a knowledge of the will of God; the example of Christ; a throne of grace ever accessible; the counsel and help of the Holy Spirit. If God looked for the fruits of justice and righteousness from the Jews, what manner of fruit may He reasonably expect from you?
2. Even those of you who are not Christians, but are still living in sin, have privileges: a preached Gospel; the offer of a free, full, and present salvation; the strivings with you of the Holy Ghost. Despise them not, or you will perish.—Thomas Neave.
THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD
Isa_5:1-7. Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song, &c.
The points of moral instruction made prominent in this parable are—I. That God’s gifts of truth, light as to duty, moral culture, and opportunities for doing good, create peculiar obligations to be morally fruitful, to do justice, and love mercy. II. That men so blessed with privileges will be held to a stern accountability. III. That failing to meet this, they must expect that God will take away their privileges and give them to others who will render the fruits in their season (Mat_21:43). IV. That there is a line beyond which God does not deem it wise to waste His moral efforts upon self-hardened sinners. V. That in His view the exigencies of His moral kingdom demand of Him rather that He make sinners, beyond that line, an example of His righteous displeasure against their awful wickedness, and a warning to other sinners lest they venture too far in abusing His compassionate and long-suffering efforts to reclaim and save them. It is a terrible thing to withstand God in His labours to save the soul.—Henry Cowles, D.D., Commentary on Isaiah, p. 30.
GREAT PRIVILEGES
Isa_5:1-7. Now will I sing to my well-beloved, &c.
I. Great privileges are bestowed by God according to the good pleasure of His will.
1. Obviously this is true of the great privileges accorded to the Jewish nation. They were not granted because of anything in them (Deu_7:7; Deu_9:4-6, &c.). There were other “hills” that would have been just as suitable for a vineyard, and just as fruitful, had the great Husbandman been pleased to deal with them in the same manner.
2. If we consider our own religious privileges, we must acknowledge the same great principle: other nations still heathen deserve them just as much as we do; and our heathen forefathers to whom they were first granted were in no sense superior to the heathen of to-day. We owe our superiority to our privileges, not our privileges to our superiority.
3. The same principle is as true of temporal as of spiritual privileges. Why are some born clever, and others stupid? some strong and others weak? some rich, and others poor? We can return no other answer than that such is the will of God.—This principle seems to be surrounded by a cloud of mystery; but there are rays of light that relieve it,—to some of them we shall presently refer; and we must be careful not to darken it by our own folly. We must not imagine, because God acts according to the good pleasure of His will, that therefore He acts arbitrarily, capriciously, out of mere whim and fancy. Though He may not disclose to us the reasons for many of His procedures, we may be sure that He has good reasons. In withholding them from us—possibly because we are as yet incapable of understanding them,—and thus making demands upon our faith, He deals with us just as we frequently deal with our children.
II. Great privileges involve great responsibilities. From the vineyard so carefully cultivated choice grapes are justly expected. This is a truth so familiar that it is apt to become to us a mere truism. But we shall do well to look at it steadily,—
1. As a guide to us in our duty. It is well to pause and consider what privileges God has conferred upon us, that we may be aroused to a perception of the nature and extent of the demands which He is certain to make upon us. In view of our privileges, what ought our life to be? (Luk_12:48).
2. As a help to us in our perplexities. In view of such providential arrangements as have been referred to, these are sometimes very painful. But we must remember that the great principle before us admits of being very variously stated. It is just as true that “small privileges involve small responsibilities.” We shall adopt the slander of the wicked and slothful servant, if we think of God as a hard master who seeks to reap where He has not sown. If God has entrusted to any man only one talent,—and He entrusts to every man at least as much as that,—He will not demand from Him the usury upon ten talents, nor upon two.
III. Great privileges do not necessarily result in great happiness. They ought to do so; they often do so; but as frequently they fail to do so. Even in temporal things, the happiest men are not always those whose possessions are most various and ample. The most learned men are not always those who own the largest libraries. And the holiest men are not always those whose religious opportunities are most numerous and great. Why is it, that great privileges and great happiness are not always associated? Because man is a voluntary agent, and God will not force happiness upon any man. He may offer us eternal life, but we must “lay hold” of it. He may shed upon our path great light, but we must walk in it (Isa_2:5).
PRACTICAL LESSON.—Instead of repining because our privileges are not more numerous and great, let us diligently use those which have been granted to us, and so make them what they were intended to be—sources of blessing to us. Enclosed within God’s vineyard, and carefully cultured by Him, let us see to it that the grapes we bring forth are not wild grapes.
IV. Great privileges neglected or misused bring on great condemnations (Isa_5:5-6). Compare also Luk_13:6-9. Had that fig-tree been growing on some open common, notwithstanding its barrenness, it might have stood till it decayed, but because it was barren in a “vineyard” the righteous order is given, “Cut it down!” This principle, also, we may turn to practical account. Like a former one, we may use it—
1. To help us in our perplexities. Sometimes we are in trouble to know what will become of the heathen in the day of judgment. Well, even if they are condemned, they will be condemned less severely than those who have misused greater privileges (Mat_11:22; Luk_12:48).
2. To stimulate us to a faithful discharge of duty. Fear is not the highest motive, but it is a very useful one, and no truly wise man will leave it out of account. We need every kind of help to fortify us against temptation, and it is good to remember what will be the result if we yield to it, and so remain barren and unfruitful, or even bring forth “wild grapes” (Heb_4:1; 1Pe_1:7; Php_2:12).
Fear is useful as a motive, but hope is still more helpful; and in the matter of our salvation we may employ both fear and hope as allies. Reverse the last principle, and read it thus, Great privileges well used secure corresponding rewards. Compare Luk_19:17. If the choice vine planted in the fruitful vineyard bring forth “good grapes,” the Husbandman will pronounce over it rejoicing benedictions (Heb_6:7).
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Isa 5:1-2
Isa 5:1-2
I. "He looked that it should bring forth grapes." This is surely not unreasonable. It is exactly what you and I should do. It will not be denied by anybody that we are receiving the highest advantages that ever fell to the lot of the world. God might challenge us to say what He has left undone. We live (1) in the day of full revelation, (2) under the highest civilisation. "It brought forth wild grapes," and yet everything was done for it that could be done. The possibility of a man going down to darkness through the very light of the sanctuary, the possibility of taking the rain and dew and light of heaven and transforming them into poison, and offering a bitter disappointment to the heart of God, is a fearful thought.
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II. Notice what becomes of the 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." And if God do so with the vineyard which He planted in the ancient time, what shall He say to the clouds, what shall he say to the earth, what shall He say to all the influences of our life, when we have taken counsel together and slain His Son, and steeped the vineyard in the blood of His well-beloved?
Parker, Penny Pulpit, No. 384.
References: Isa 5:1-7.—Homilist, Excelsior Series, vol. v., p. 107. Isa 5:1-30.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 276.
Isa 5:2
To us God says, as to Israel of old, "What more could I do to My vineyard that I have not done? Why, then, when I looked for grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?"
Is not this indictment true? No true patriot, much less Christian, can look without grave anxiety on the tastes and tendencies of the times in which we live. Wild grapes, offensive to God, mischievous to others, and ruinous to us, are being produced on every hand. The husbandman describes some of them.
I. The excessive greed of gain—the oppressive selfishness that tramples under foot the claims of brotherhood and the rights of men.
II. The crying sin of intemperance.
III. The headstrong rush after pleasure; the follies and frivolities of the tens of thousands whose whole time and tastes and talents are wickedly laid at the shrine of sensual delights.
IV. Sensuality in its grosser and fouler shapes.
V. Infidelity. "Woe unto them that regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operations of His hands."
VI. Fraud, falsehood, and dishonesty. "Woe to them that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter," etc.
Such are some of the elements of moral mischief which threaten the ruin of our beloved land. If England lives on, and grows in lustre as she lives, it must be because the King Immanuel is undisputed monarch of the national heart, uncontrolled director of the national policy and the national will.
J. Jackson Wray, Light from the Old Lamp, p. 241.
I. Consider the distinguishing features which, in God’s allegory, separate the grape from the wild grape. (1) The good grape is not in a state of nature; the wild grape is. Either it has had no culture, or it has not responded to its culture. Therefore it is wild. The secret of its state lies in that one word "wild." (2) The wild grape does not grow or ripen into use. It springs, it hangs on the bough, and it falls, for itself. No man is the better for it. None gather strength or refreshment or delight there. (3) The wild grape has not the sweetness of the true. It is harsh and sour, because (4) the wild grape has never been grafted.
II. The first thing of all, without which everything else in religion is only a blank, is, and must be, a real living union with the Lord Jesus Christ. By that union, the life which was unchanged, selfish, tasteless or bitter, and without Christ, becomes a new, expansive, loving, Christlike life, and the wild grape in the desert is turned into the true grape of paradise.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 95.
Isa 5:4
I. The first way of putting, or rather of vindicating, the question of our text is when we contend that Atheism has a far better apology for resisting the evidences of a God which are spread over creation, than worldly-mindedness for manifesting insensibility to redemption through Christ. Atheism may ask for a wider sphere of expatiation and for a more glowing stamp of divinity, for it falls within our power to conceive a richer manifestation of the Invisible Godhead. But the worldly-minded cannot ask for a more touching proof of the love of the Almighty, or for a more bounteous provision for human necessities, or for more moving motives to repentance and obedience. What has been done for the vineyard, regard being had to the augustness of the Being who did it, proclaims us ruined if we bring not forth such fruits as God requires at our hands.
II. We may affirm that as much has been done as could have been done for the vineyard, regard being had to the completeness and fulness of the work, as well as the greatness of its Author. Has not much been done for the vineyard, since redemption thus meets the every necessity of the guilty, the helpless, and the wretched—for creatures whom it found in the lowest degradation, and leaves them not till it elevates them to the noblest exaltation?
III. Much of what has been done for the vineyard consists in the greatness of the reward which the Gospel proposes to righteousness, and the greatness of the punishment which it denounces on impenitence. It was not redemption from mere temporary evil that Jesus Christ effected. The consequences of transgression spread themselves through eternity; and the Saviour, when He bowed His head and said, "It is finished," had provided for the removal of these consequences in all the immenseness, whether of their magnitude or their duration. Much, exceeding much, has been done by God for the vineyard, seeing that He has opened before us prospects for eternity, than which imagination can conceive none more brilliant if we close with the proffers, and none more appalling if we refuse.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1796.
References: Isa 5:4.—C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical p. 219. Isa 5:6.—Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi, p. 219. Isa 5:9.—W. V. Robinson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 148. Isa 5:18, Isa 5:19.—R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons, vol. i., p. 82.
Isa 5:20
I. The sin against which I would warn you is the sin of disregarding, and even of in the least degree underrating, the eternal distinctions of right and wrong; it is, in one word, the sin of viewing things in their wrong aspects, or of calling things by their wrong names. To talk otherwise than sadly and seriously of sin is sin.
II. The cause of the sin is a faint appreciation of moral evil; a tampering with it, a destruction of that healthy instinct which revolts at it. It is the very nature of sin, that the more we know of it the less we know it; the more we are familiar with it the less do we understand its vileness.
III. The punishment of this sin is nothing less than the failure of all life—the waste, the loss, the shipwreck of the human soul—the sapping of every moral force and every vital instinct. And this is death. This is the worst woe that can befall finally those who have learnt to call things by their wrong names—to call evil good, and good evil.
F. W. Farrar, In the Days of thy Youth, p. 129.
References: Isa 5:20.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 36; F. W. Farrar, Preacher’s Monthly, vol. x., p. 178.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 1-24. Judah, God's unfruitful vineyard, and the judgment upon…
1-24. Judah, God's unfruitful vineyard, and the judgment upon it.
1. I] i.e. Isaiah. To my] rather, 'for my,' or 'of my.' The beloved, as appears later, is Jehovah: cp. our Lord's parable (Mat_21:33). The allegory is rhythmical in form: cp. Son_8:11-14.
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2. Tower] watch-tower: see on Isa_1:8.
3f. God speaks.
7. Judgment] i.e. justice. Oppression] perhaps better, 'bloodshed.' A cry] i.e. of the oppressed.
8-10. Unjust seizure of land resulting in barrenness and want of population.
8. Place] RV 'room.'
10. Bath] about 8 gallons. And the seed, etc.] RV 'and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah.' An ephah is the tenth part of a homer, which was 10 or 12 bushels (Eze_45:11).
11. That continue until night] RV 'that tarry late into the night.'
12. Regard not, etc.] i.e. have no regard for the working of the Lord's will in the events of history.
13. Are gone into captivity] an example of the 'prophetic perfect.' The future is regarded as so certain that it is described as past.
14. Hell] Heb. Sheol, i.e. the place of departed spirits, RM 'the grave': cp. Gen_37:35.
15. Cp. Isa_2:9, Isa_2:17.
17. After their manner] RV 'as in their pasture.' So desolate will the cities be.
Strangers] RM 'wanderers.' The meaning is that nomad tribes wander over the land at pleasure.
18. The people have chained themselves to sin like beasts of burden.
19. They scoff at the declared judgments of God.
20. The perverting of all moral distinctions.
23. Bribery and injustice.
25-30. The position of these vv. is doubtful. Very probably they should be connected with the prophecy, Isa_9:8 to Isa_10:4. In that section the closing words of Isa_5:25 occur four times as a sort of refrain.
26. Lift up an ensign] i.e. as a signal to muster them: cp. Isa_11:10; Isa_18:3; Isa_49:22; Isa_62:10. Nations] i.e. those under the dominion of the Assyrian king and serving in his army. Hiss] The metaphor is from collecting a swarm of bees (Isa_7:18).
30. They shall roar against them] i.e. the enemies against God's people.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 The Song of the Vineyard and the Six Woes
CHAPTER 5
The Song of the Vineyard and the Six Woes
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1. The song of the vineyard and Jehovah’s lament (Isa 5:1-4) 2. The judgment upon the vineyard (Isa 5:5-7) 3. The wild grapes (Isa 5:8-23) 4. First woe against covetousness (Isa 5:8-10) 5. Second woe against fleshly lusts (Isa 5:11-17) 6. Third woe against mockers (Isa 5:18-19) 7. Fourth woe against moral insensibility (Isa 5:20) 8. Fifth woe against conceit (Isa 5:21) 9. Sixth woe against lawlessness (Isa 5:22-23) 10. Jehovah’s anger and the invader announced (Isa 5:24-30)Compare the song of the vineyard with Mat 21:33-44. The wild grapes of Israel fully correspond to the wild grapes of nominal Christendom. “If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee” Rom 11:21.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 The Disappointment of the Vineyard
The Disappointment of the Vineyard
v. 1. Now will I sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Beloved, the prophet singing to Jehovah, concerning the Lord, hut at the same time expressing the thoughts of the Lord, touching His vineyard, that of His Church at the time of the prophet. My Well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill, literally, "on the horn, or summit, of a son of oil," the vineyard being situated on a hill and having most fertile soil;
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v. 2. and He fenced it, rather, spaded or hoed it thoroughly, and gathered out the stones thereof, which hindered the proper cultivation of the ground, and planted it with the choicest vine, a very fine Oriental variety of grape, called sorek, and built a tower in the midst of it, this being the usual watch-tower, and also made a wine-press therein, the lower trough into which the grape-juice flowed from the wine-press proper; and He looked that it should bring forth grapes, the fruit of the excellent vine which He had planted there, and it brought forth wild grapes, the sour product of the wild vine or of a similar plant.
v. 3. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, to whom the prophet is specifically addressing himself, appealing to them as to judges in this difficult situation, judge, I pray you, betwixt Me and My vineyard, making their decision on the basis of the facts presented to them, which were visible to even the casual onlooker.
v. 4. What could have been done more to My vineyard that I have not done in it? The Lord had shown His people mercy, goodness, and truth in so many ways that He had, as it were, exhausted His love in their behalf. He had not reached the limit of His grace in dealing with them, but matters had certainly reached a stage where they could expect no more at His hand. Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? Surely if the Lord now abandoned this vineyard, the people themselves must admit that they bad fully deserved such treatment, that they had but themselves to blame for their destruction, as the Lord now states.
v. 5. And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard, the Judge Himself announcing the punishment which He had decided upon: I will take away the hedge thereof, one of thorns and briers being the usual protection of vineyards in the Orient, and it shall be eaten up, and break down the wall thereof, as a second means of keeping out marauders, and it shall be trodden down, the emphatic statement of the original being "for a treading down";
v. 6. and I will lay it waste, for a complete ruin; it shall not be pruned, to remove the superfluous shoots, nor digged, to loosen the ground for the admission of air to the roots; but there shall come up briers and thorns, making the growth of vines of the right and welcome kind impossible; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
v. 7. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah His pleasant plant, literally, "the plant of His pleasure"; and He looked for judgment, that the people would do what is right and good, but behold oppression, the infringement of rights by graft and other forms of wickedness; for righteousness, that is, an outward dealing according to the demands of a righteous conduct, but behold a cry, namely, that of the people who suffer wrong. The explanation of the parable is here briefly indicated. Israel was the vineyard of the Lord, separated by Him from all nations, placed into a rich and fruitful land and endowed with unsurpassed blessings in every respect, among them the nobles of the people, the patriarchs, the kings, the priests, the prophets. The watch-tower of God in the midst of His people was the government of David and of His house. But this vineyard had bitterly disappointed the Lord in His expectations, so that He finally sent His punishment in full measure, not only the Babylonian captivity, but the ultimate overthrow of the Jewish nation and Church in the year 70 A. D. Cf Psalms 80; Mat 21:33-46. Let the Christian Church and all those who profess to be members of the Church take warning, for the Lord searches the reins and hearts and at all times expects true fruits of righteousness from all those who are called after His name.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5 General Information:
General Information:
Isaiah tells a parable about a farmer and his vineyard. The farmer represents God and the vineyard represents the people of Judah, the southern kingdom of the Israelites. (See: Parables)
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my well beloved
"my dear friend"
on a very fertile hill
"on a hill where very good crops could grow"
He spaded it
"He prepared the soil." This expresson refers to using a tool to dig into the ground to prepare it for planting.
He built a tower in the middle of it
"He made a tall building in the middle of the vineyard to watch over it." Someone would stand at the top of the tower to watch the vineyard and make sure that no animals or people went into it. The full meaning of this statement can be made clear. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
built a winepress
"dug a pit to squeeze out the grape juice." A winepress is a low place carved out of rock in the ground where workers step on the grapes to crush them with their feet, in order to remove the grape juice.
wild grapes
"worthless grapes" or "bad tasting grapes"
translationWords
beloved
vineyard
vine
winepress
grape
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6 5:1-30 The prophet pronounced judgment through song (5:1-7) and…
5:1-30 The prophet pronounced judgment through song (5:1-7) and prophecies of woe (5:8-30). Although Israel’s future condition would be one of purity and fellowship with God (4:2-6), that future cannot ignore the present sinful condition of the people and their leaders.
5:1-7 The Song of the Vineyard expresses in poetic form God’s indictment of the wicked leadership that had ruined his vineyard, Israel. Like some wisdom literature, it presents readers with an account of a puzzling situation (5:1-2) before giving its spiritual significance (5:3-7). The theme of the vineyard’s transformation is found again in ch 27 and in Jesus’ teaching (Matt 21:33; Mark 12:1).
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5:1 The one I love refers to the Lord; the prophet was singing this song on the Lord’s behalf. • At first, the song sounds like a love song, but by 5:3 readers realize it is actually a complaint. • On Israel as God’s vineyard, see also 3:14; Matt 21:33-46; John 15:1-17.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.