Isaiah must have been reading the book right before his on the shelf because Chapter five’s first 4.5 verses sound so much like Song of Solomon: “I will sing for the one I love . . . .“ You might question his choice of a vineyard as the subject of this love song. In our day, it might have been a beach or a mountain retreat, but a vineyard worked for Isaiah.
The writer sings the song of One who poured his heart and soul into finding exactly the right place for a vineyard, clearing it of stones, cutting a winepress out of the stones, even building a watchtower to keep its tender treasures safe. Everything that could be done to make this vineyard happy was done—EVERYTHING!
“…but it yielded only bad grapes!”
That’s all that needed to be said. It had just one raison d’etre – and it failed.
Down comes the protection, down comes the watchtower, back come the stones, the briars and thorns, the animals that trample the tender plants into oblivion—and it becomes a desert!
What had the people of Judah and Jerusalem done to deserve such a scathing reckoning? It’s a very chilling list if we read this as a warning for us as well:
- V. 8 –“What sorrow for you who buy up house after house and field after field,
until everyone is evicted and you live alone in the land.” - V. 11,12 – “What sorrow for those who get up early in the morning, looking for a drink of alcohol
and spend long evenings drinking wine to make themselves flaming drunk.12 They furnish wine and lovely music at their grand parties—lyre and harp, tambourine and flute—but they never think about the Lord or notice what he is doing.” - V.18,19a – What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them with ropes made of lies, who drag wickedness behind them like a cart!19 They even mock God and say, ‘Hurry up and do something! We want to see what you can do.”
- V. 20 – What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.”
Not a very long list brought total destruction by the One who loved the vineyard!
I couldn’t help but thinking about all the small lots in Southlake that are being bought up to build solitary McMansions ! About all the university students so eager to get back to college parties—something they probably heard their parents bragging about from their own glory days!
I couldn’t help but thinking about all the political rhetoric we have heard in the last couple of weeks—the twisting of truth, calling what is evil good and what is good evil . . . .
This chapter does not have a happy ending. Sorry about that, Disney fans. “If someone looks across the land, only darkness and distress will be seen.”
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
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