이사야 Chapter 5

Translation: ESV

1

Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

Key Message

This song contains the lament of the vineyard owner who lovingly tended Israel with care but was disappointed in the result.

▸Isaiah 5 opens with the famous 'Song of the Vineyard.

Isaiah 5 opens with the famous 'Song of the Vineyard.' Isaiah begins as if it were a love song, then gradually transitions into a judgment oracle. 'My beloved' refers to God, and the vineyard symbolizes Israel. This song is an outstanding example of prophetic parable.

Related Verses

Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower.
2

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; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.

Key Message

Despite all the grace and care God poured out on Israel, Israel bore 'wild grapes' contrary to his expectations.

▸The care and labor invested by the vineyard owner is described in detail: tilling the ground, removing stones, planting the finest vines, building a watchtower, and preparing a winepress.

3

And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.

Key Message

God uses the wise method of leading the audience to recognize their own sin by having them make the judgment themselves.

▸God assigns the audience (inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah) the role of judge.

4

What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

Key Message

God's grace is sufficient and complete, and Israel's failure lies not in any deficiency of God's grace but in Israel's own choices.

▸God's lament is expressed in a direct question.

5

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.

Key Message

The removal of God's protection is the heart of judgment; without God's providential protection, Israel becomes defenseless before foreign invaders.

▸The parable transitions into a declaration of judgment.

6

I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

Key Message

God's judgment includes control over the natural order, and even the withholding of rain is an expression of God's sovereign judgment.

▸This is judgment completed.

7

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!

Key Message

What God seeks from Israel is justice and righteousness, and their absence is the fundamental cause of judgment.

▸The interpretation of the vineyard parable is directly given.

8

Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.

Key Message

Greedy accumulation of land destroys the community and expels the poor—a sin that incurs God's declaration of woe.

▸The remainder of chapter 5 (verses 8-30) contains six 'woe' declarations against specific sins of Israel.

9

The LORD of hosts has sworn in my hearing: "Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.

Key Message

What is accumulated through greed will become desolate on the day of judgment; prosperity without God cannot endure.

▸This is the judgment that will come upon those who greedily accumulated houses and land—those houses will become desolate and no one will live in them.

10

For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah."

Key Message

God's judgment manifests as a dramatic decrease in economic productivity; the result of greed is actually poverty.

▸The specific content of judgment is expressed in agricultural numbers.

11

Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine inflames them!

Key Message

Dissipated drunkenness causes one to turn away from God's work; obsession with pleasure is a sin that incurs God's woe.

▸The second woe: a warning against drunkenness.

12

They have lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine at their feasts, but they do not regard the deeds of the LORD, or see the work of his hands.

Key Message

When material prosperity and pleasures cause one to turn away from God's work, they become a breeding ground for spiritual decay.

▸Lavish feasts filled with music and wine are depicted.

13

Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge; their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched with thirst.

Key Message

Spiritual ignorance of God leads to the historical disaster of exile and famine.

▸The result of spiritual ignorance is being taken into exile.

14

Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down, her revelers and he who exults in her.

Key Message

Dissipated pleasure in this life ultimately leads to death and judgment; Sheol swallows all the proud.

▸Sheol (the realm of the dead) opens its mouth like a devouring creature.

15

Man is humbled, and each one is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are humbled.

Key Message

Human social status is meaningless before God's judgment; all people must stand before God.

▸Similar content to 2:11-12 is repeated.

16

But the LORD of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.

Key Message

God alone is exalted through justice and righteousness; holiness is not an abstract concept but manifests in concrete social righteousness.

▸Amid the humbling of all things, only God is exalted—because of his justice and righteousness.

17

Then shall the lambs graze as in their pasture, and nomads shall eat among the ruins of the rich.

Key Message

The desolated lands of the rich becoming spaces for the poor is the just reversal of God's judgment.

▸This is the scene after judgment.

18

Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes,

Key Message

God's woe falls on those who actively pursue wickedness and willfully indulge in it.

▸The third woe: against those who are attached to wickedness and actively draw sin toward themselves.

19

who say: "Let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it; let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come, that we may know it!"

Key Message

Mocking God's prophecies is arrogance that intensifies judgment; God's word will certainly be fulfilled.

▸The words of those who mock God's prophecies of judgment and taunt 'let's see you try' are quoted.

20

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Key Message

Intentional inversion of moral values is one of the most serious sins; maintaining the distinction between good and evil, light and darkness, is God's will.

▸The fourth woe: against those who invert moral values.

21

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!

Key Message

Pride in one's own wisdom that excludes God is subject to God's woe; true wisdom begins with the fear of the LORD.

▸The fifth woe: against those who are proud of their own wisdom.

22

Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink,

Key Message

The hypocrisy of being heroic at drinking but cowardly in executing justice is subject to God's woe.

▸The beginning of the sixth woe: the theme of drunkenness from verse 11 is repeated, but here the 'valor' in drinking is particularly emphasized.

23

who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!

Key Message

Judicial corruption through bribery that deprives the innocent of justice is the most serious social wickedness.

▸The specific wickedness of the sixth woe: taking bribes to acquit the guilty and deprive the innocent of their right.

24

Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

Key Message

Rejecting God's law and despising his word is the fundamental cause of all wickedness, and this brings about complete judgment.

▸The judgment that will come as a result of the six woes is declared.

25

Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them, and the mountains quaked; and their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.

Key Message

Sin that continues without repentance brings an increasingly intensified judgment from God; God's anger is not withdrawn without repentance.

▸'For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still' is a refrain repeated in 9:12, 17, 21, and 10:4.

26

He will raise a signal for nations far away, and whistle for them from the ends of the earth; and behold, quickly, speedily they come!

Key Message

God uses even foreign great powers as instruments of judgment on his people, and all the flow of history is under God's sovereignty.

▸God raises a signal flag and calls distant nations.

27

None is weary, none stumbles, none slumbers or sleeps, not a waistband is loose, not a sandal strap broken;

Key Message

The army of judgment that God sends is complete and unstoppable; this is the disaster to come as a result of disobedience.

▸The fearsome capability of the army God sends is depicted.

28

their arrows are sharp, all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs seem like flint, and their wheels like the whirlwind.

Key Message

Before the army sent as God's judgment instrument, human resistance is meaningless; only returning to God is the true refuge.

▸The weapons and combat power of the judgment army continue to be described.

29

Their roaring is like a lion, like young lions they roar; they growl and seize their prey; they carry it off, and none can rescue.

Key Message

The fact that there is no rescuer before the lion-like army of judgment declares the limits of human solutions and urges returning to God alone.

▸The judgment army is compared to lions.

30

They will growl over it on that day, like the growling of the sea. And if one looks to the land, behold, darkness and distress; and the light is darkened by its clouds.

Key Message

The end of judgment without repentance is darkness and distress, a despair in which light has disappeared. Yet this despair becomes the starting point of a new work of God.

▸The final verse of chapter 5 ends with the sound of foreign armies rolling in like ocean waves and the resulting darkness and distress.