Isaiah 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah sings a song about a friend's vineyard: the owner did everything well, but the vines produced only sour wild grapes, so he decides to tear down its walls and let it go to ruin. The song is then explained, the vineyard is Israel and Judah, and God looked for justice among them but found bloodshed. The rest of the chapter is a series of "how terrible" warnings against those who seize land, drink from morning to night, twist good and evil, are wise in their own eyes, and take bribes in court. It ends with God summoning a distant nation that comes swiftly and unstoppably, leaving darkness over the land.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • The speaker says he will sing for the one he loves.
   • The song is his beloved's song concerning his beloved's vineyard.
   • The beloved had a vineyard.
   • The vineyard was on a very fertile hill.
2. 5:2
   • He dug and worked the ground of the vineyard.
   • He cleared the stones out of it.
   • He planted it with choice vines.
   • He built a tower in the middle of it.
   • He also hewed out a winepress in it.
   • He expected it to produce grapes.
   • It produced sour, worthless grapes.
3. 5:3
   • The speaker addresses the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah.
   • He asks them to judge between him and his vineyard.
4. 5:4
   • He asks what more could have been done for his vineyard that he did not do in it.
   • He asks why, when he expected it to produce grapes, it produced sour, worthless grapes.
5. 5:5
   • He says he will now tell them what he is going to do to his vineyard.
   • He will remove its hedge.
   • The vineyard will be consumed.
   • He will break down its wall.
   • The vineyard will be trampled down.
6. 5:6
   • He will make it a wasteland.
   • It will not be pruned.
   • It will not be hoed or cultivated.
   • Briers and thorns will come up in it.
   • He will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.
7. 5:7
   • The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel.
   • The men of Judah are the planting of his delight.
   • He looked for justice.
   • Instead there was bloodshed and oppression.
   • He looked for righteousness.
   • Instead there was a cry of distress.
8. 5:8
   • Woe is pronounced on those who join house to house.
   • Woe is pronounced on those who add field to field until there is no place left.
   • Those people are left dwelling alone in the midst of the land.
9. 5:9
   • The LORD of hosts spoke in the speaker's ears.
   • Many houses will surely become desolate.
   • Great and fine houses will be left without an inhabitant.
10. 5:10
    • Ten acres of vineyard will yield only one bath.
    • A homer of seed will yield only an ephah.
11. 5:11
    • Woe is pronounced on those who rise early in the morning to pursue strong drink.
    • Woe is pronounced on those who linger into the twilight until wine inflames them.
12. 5:12
    • Lyre, harp, tambourine, pipe, and wine are at their feasts.
    • They do not look at the work of the LORD.
    • They have not seen the deed of his hands.
13. 5:13
    • Therefore the LORD's people go into exile.
    • They go into exile because they have no knowledge.
    • Their honored men are famished with hunger.
    • Their multitude is parched with thirst.
14. 5:14
    • Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite.
    • Sheol has opened its mouth without limit.
    • The splendor of the people goes down into it.
    • The multitude of the people goes down into it.
    • The uproar of the people goes down into it.
    • The one who rejoices goes down into it.
15. 5:15
    • Mankind is brought down.
    • Each man is humbled.
    • The eyes of the lofty are humbled.
16. 5:16
    • The LORD of hosts is exalted in judgment.
    • The holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.
17. 5:17
    • Lambs will graze as in their own pasture.
    • Sojourners will feed in the waste places of the fat ones.
18. 5:18
    • Woe is pronounced on those who drag iniquity along with cords of falsehood.
    • Woe is pronounced on those who drag sin along as with cart ropes.
19. 5:19
    • Those people say, Let him hurry and hasten his work so that we may see it.
    • Those people say, Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come so that we may know it.
20. 5:20
    • Woe is pronounced on those who call evil good.
    • Woe is pronounced on those who call good evil.
    • They put darkness for light.
    • They put light for darkness.
    • They put bitter for sweet.
    • They put sweet for bitter.
21. 5:21
    • Woe is pronounced on those who are wise in their own eyes.
    • Woe is pronounced on those who are discerning in their own sight.
22. 5:22
    • Woe is pronounced on those who are mighty at drinking wine.
    • Woe is pronounced on men of strength at mixing strong drink.
23. 5:23
    • They declare the wicked to be in the right for a bribe.
    • They take away the righteousness of the righteous from him.
24. 5:24
    • A tongue of fire devours stubble.
    • Dry grass sinks down in the flame.
    • So their root will become like rottenness.
    • Their blossom will go up like dust.
    • This happens because they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts.
    • This happens because they have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
25. 5:25
    • Therefore the anger of the LORD is kindled against his people.
    • He has stretched out his hand against them.
    • He has struck them.
    • The mountains trembled.
    • Their corpses were like refuse in the midst of the streets.
    • For all this his anger is not turned away.
    • His hand is still stretched out.
26. 5:26
    • He will lift up a signal banner to distant nations.
    • He will whistle for them from the end of the earth.
    • They will come speedily and swiftly.
27. 5:27
    • None among them is weary.
    • None among them stumbles.
    • None slumbers.
    • None sleeps.
    • The belt of their loins is not loosened.
    • The strap of their sandals is not broken.
28. 5:28
    • Their arrows are sharpened.
    • All their bows are bent.
    • The hooves of their horses are reckoned like flint.
    • Their wheels are like a whirlwind.
29. 5:29
    • Their roaring is like a lion.
    • They roar like young lions.
    • They growl and seize the prey.
    • They carry it off beyond rescue.
    • No one delivers it.
30. 5:30
    • In that day they will roar over it like the roaring of the sea.
    • If one looks to the land, there is darkness and distress.
    • The light is darkened by the clouds of the land.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

The Hebrew word here for "the one I love" is the ordinary term for a sweetheart or close friend used in love songs, and the opening line sets the piece up as a love song. "A hill with very rich soil" translates a Hebrew idiom that runs literally "a horn, a son of oil", a steep, sunny hillside of the kind vine-growers prized.

5:2

Each step is standard vineyard work. A watchtower was a stone lookout where a guard slept through the ripening season to keep off thieves, foxes and grazing animals. A winepress was not a machine but a shallow basin cut down into the rock, where grapes were trampled by foot, with a channel running to a lower basin that caught the juice. The word for the sour grapes means something like "stinkers", small, hard, worthless fruit.

5:3

"Decide between me and my vineyard" is courtroom language: the speaker asks the crowd to sit as judges and give a verdict in a dispute between two parties.

5:5

Vineyards were protected twice over, a hedge of thorny brush against animals and a low stone wall against people. Taking both away does not destroy the vines; it simply leaves them open to anything that wanders in.

5:6

Grapevines need care every year. Farmers cut back the old branches and broke up the hard soil around the roots. Left alone, a vineyard fills up with thorns fast.

5:7

"The LORD" in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Hebrew writes with four consonants and which readers replaced aloud with the word for "Lord." "Hosts" means armies, the assembled forces of heaven. The last lines carry a pair of puns that English cannot reproduce: he looked for mishpat (justice) and got mispach (bloodshed), for tsedaqah (right living) and got tse'aqah (a scream).

5:8

Israelite land was held as a family inheritance, passed down and not meant to be permanently sold off. Buying up a neighbor's house and field, usually when debt forced the sale, left the old owners landless and put whole districts into the hands of a few estate-holders, who then lived "alone," with no neighbors left.

5:10

A bath was a liquid measure of roughly six gallons (about twenty-two liters). A homer was about ten times that in dry measure, and an ephah was a tenth of a homer. So ten acres of vines yield about one large jar of wine, and a farmer who sows ten sacks of seed gets one sack back, less than he planted. "Ten acres" renders "ten yoke," the area a pair of oxen could plow in a day.

5:11

"Strong drink" translates shekar, fermented drink made from something other than grapes, barley beer, or drink made from dates or honey. Feasting normally began in the evening; starting at sunrise and carrying on past dark is the point of the complaint.

5:12

The King James uses old instrument names. A "viol" is a lyre, a small harp held in the arms. A "tabret" is a tambourine, and a "pipe" is a flute.

5:13

Exile means mass deportation: conquering empires broke a defeated people by marching much of the population, especially its leading families, to resettle far from home.

5:14

The King James "hell" translates Sheol, which in Hebrew is not a place of punishment for the wicked but the underworld where all the dead go alike. It is pictured here as a creature with a gaping throat that swallows the living and is never full.

5:15

"The mean man" in the King James does not mean cruel. It is the older sense of "mean": low-ranking, ordinary, the common person as opposed to the great.

5:16

"Sanctified" means shown to be holy. Holy means set apart and completely pure, different from everything else.

5:17

The Hebrew of the second half of this verse is uncertain. It can be read as "strangers" or resident foreigners feeding among the ruins of the rich, or, with a different division of the same consonants, as young sheep or goats grazing there. Either way, the estates of verse 8 have become open pasture.

5:18

The picture is of a farm animal in harness. The word behind "lies" means emptiness or falsehood, and the ropes are the ones used to drag a loaded cart, so these people are not being pulled into wrongdoing but hauling it along after themselves, deliberately and with effort.

5:19

These are the prophet's own words about God's coming "work" and "plan," thrown back at him as a taunt by people who do not expect anything to happen.

5:21

"Prudent" is an old word for careful and clever.

5:22

"Heroes" and "champions" translate words normally used of soldiers who distinguish themselves in battle; the insult lies in applying warriors' titles to drinking. "Mixing" strong drink refers to blending it with water, spices or honey before serving.

5:23

"Reward" in the King James often means a bribe. Judges heard cases at the city gate, and a judge who took money would decide in favor of whoever paid him.

5:24

Chaff is the light, dry husk separated from grain at threshing and blown away by the wind, proverbially worthless and instantly flammable. "Teaching" here translates torah, meaning instruction or direction given by God, not only written law.

5:25

Leaving corpses unburied in the open street was among the worst dishonours imaginable in this culture, where burying the dead was a binding family duty. The closing line ("his anger has not turned away, and his hand is still raised") is a refrain that returns several times later in Isaiah, marking off successive stages of the same judgment.

5:26

A signal flag was raised on a hilltop to muster troops or call an army to assemble. Whistling was how a keeper called bees to the hive or a herdsman called animals; here the distant nations come at a whistle, like something summoned rather than negotiated with.

5:27

A belt gathered up the long robe at the waist so a man could march or fight; a loose belt or a snapped sandal strap was the kind of small failure that pulled a soldier out of the line. This army has none of them.

5:28

"Bows are strung" means the string is already fitted and drawn, ready to shoot, not stored. Horses in this period were not shod, so hard hooves that would not split on stony ground were a genuine measure of a war-horse. The wheels are chariot wheels.

5:29

"Carry it away safe" means safe for the lion. The prey is taken somewhere no one can get it back.

5:30

The last clause is difficult in Hebrew and has been read either as the light going dark behind the clouds, or as the sky itself darkening over the land. The word rendered "misery" is the standard term for the distress of a besieged or defeated people.