START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 5:1-7
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OBSERVE:
Isaiah uses a technique that will be very familiar to readers of the Gospels — he tells a story. His parable of the vineyard does two things at once. First, it initially conceals his message. Isaiah uses his story-telling technique much the way Jesus uses parables — he “hooks” his audience. Second, he “sets the hook” with lovely descriptions, and then “reels” them in, making a rather disturbing application through his metaphor of the vineyard.
Vineyards were an important symbol of prosperity and abundance to the people of Israel. Micah (a contemporary of Isaiah’s) describes the time of God’s future reign with this image:
…they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid (Micah 4:4).
Psalm 80 uses language very similar to that of Isaiah when it describes Israel. The Psalmist addresses God and says:
You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land (Psalm 80:8-9).
In Isaiah’s vivid metaphor, he offers a similar description of Israel:
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
So far, so good. Everybody loves a well-planted and well-tended vineyard. The audience in Jerusalem, hearing this lyrical love-song, is surely drawn in, congratulating themselves on all that God has done for them and for their prosperity. This is a very positive image.
And then comes the twist. Isaiah is singing the song on behalf of his beloved — the Lord. But the Lord is surprised that despite all of his efforts on behalf of his vineyard, the yield is unacceptable:
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
Then, the Lord himself speaks directly through Isaiah to the people, and challenges them to a debate. This seems to be a pattern. We saw in Isaiah 1:18, that the Lord challenges his people to:
Come now, let us argue it out…
Here, he demands that the citizens of Jerusalem and Judah arbitrate his case with the vineyard that yielded wild grapes:
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
And now God begins to reveal what he plans to do, and this is very very bad news for them:
And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
Just in case there is any confusion, Isaiah finally reveals the “punch-line” when he makes it clear just who the vineyard represents:
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
Given the historical context of Isaiah’s time, the people of Judah would do well to heed the warning. The Assyrians were already beginning to uproot the vineyard in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and would complete their destruction by 721 B.C.
Isaiah is warning the Southern Kingdom of Judah that they will be next unless they practice justice and righteousness.
APPLY:
What happens when people are given every opportunity to succeed, and they squander that opportunity? This is one application of this Song of the Vineyard.
Is it not true that God has given human beings every opportunity to succeed, to prosper, to thrive? He has given us a world with oxygen, plentiful food and resources — ample enough to share with everyone.
What has been our response? Where God expected justice, he saw bloodshed; and where he expected righteousness he heard a cry!
This has been the human situation throughout history, when the resources that are available to all have been greedily acquired by the few — usually through warfare or financial manipulation.
Isaiah has already made it crystal clear what his definition of justice includes:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:16-17).
These are the good grapes that the vineyard was meant to yield. Isaiah warns us that the consequences of injustice will be judgment.
RESPOND:
I have had so many wonderful opportunities in my own life. I had a good, solid family. I was given a good foundation that prepared me for college and seminary.
However, I am also aware of the many opportunities that I’ve squandered. My family lived in Spain when I was young, and I didn’t learn to speak Spanish. My family later lived in Japan, and I didn’t learn to speak Japanese. I’ve thought many times over the years how useful it might have been to be reasonably fluent in those languages today.
That scarcely scratches the surface of all the other “gifts” I’ve been given by God — talents untapped, or breaks that I didn’t take advantage of. And even more than that, the grace and mercy and spiritual gifts that God has lavished on me — I become ashamed that I have been so ungrateful and un-enterprising.
Thus I am all the more grateful for God’s abundant grace that continually “replants” me where I have borne wild grapes. But I dare not continue to presume on that grace. When I repent, I must also heed the warning of another prophetic figure, John the Baptist:
Bear fruits worthy of repentance… Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Luke 3:8,9).
Lord, you have planted a fruitful vineyard in our lives. Please continue to supervise and guide us so that we may bear abundant fruit for you. Amen.
PHOTOS:
“Isaiah 5 verse 1” uses the following photo:
“Flying over vineyards #fromwhereidrone” by Dirk Dallas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.
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