Isaiah 5:1 - Meaning and Application

See how many different ways the great God uses to wake sinners up to repentance, by showing them their sin, misery, and danger. Sometimes he speaks in plain words, and sometimes in parables. Sometimes he uses prose, and sometimes verse, as he does here. “We have reasoned with you” (Isaiah 1:18), and now, as it were, “let us put your case into a song, written to honor my beloved.”

God the Father gives the song to honor Christ, his well-beloved Son, whom he has made Lord of the vineyard. The prophet also sings it to honor Christ, for he too is his beloved. The Old Testament prophets were friends of the bridegroom. Christ is God’s beloved Son and our beloved Savior. Whatever is said or sung about the church is meant to praise him, even when, as here, it also brings shame to us.

This parable is put into a song so it will move the heart more deeply. It is easier to learn, easier to remember exactly, and easier to pass on to later generations. It also explains the song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), showing that what he foretold had now come true. Jerome says that Christ, the beloved One, in effect sang this mournful song when he looked at Jerusalem and wept over it (Luke 19:41). He also pointed to it in the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21:33 and following), though there the fault was with the vine-growers, and here the fault is with the vines.

First, we see the great things God had done for the Jewish church and nation. While the rest of the world lay like common ground, not yet cultivated by divine revelation, that people were his vineyard. They were his chosen people, set apart for himself. The land where he planted them was special, a very fruitful hill, “the horn of the son of oil,” as the margin puts it. There was abundance, like a cornucopia, and there was richness, for they ate the fat and drank the sweet. God gave them good things so they could honor him with sacrifices and freewill offerings. The advantages of our own place and position will also be called into account one day.

God did even more for this vineyard. He fenced it, taking it under his special protection and keeping it night and day under his own eye, so no one should harm it (Isaiah 27:2-3). If they had not torn down their own fence, no enemy could have entered, (Psalm 125:2; Psalm 131:1-4). He gathered out the stones, so that nothing from outside would damage it and nothing inside would hinder its fruitfulness. In this, he offered his grace to remove the stony heart. He planted it with the choicest vine, giving them a pure religion, a most excellent law, and ordinances fitted to keep them close to him (Jeremiah 2:21).

He also built a tower in the middle of it, either for defense against attack or for the workers to live in. More likely, it was a place for the owner to sit and look over the vines (Song of Solomon 7:12), like a summer house. This tower was the temple, around which the priests lived, and where God promised to meet his people and show them his presence and delight in them. He made a winepress in it as well, setting up his altar, where the sacrifices, as the fruit of the vineyard, were to be brought.

Second, we see the disappointment of his fair and rightful expectations. He looked for grapes, and he had every reason to expect them. God expects fruit from those who enjoy vineyard privileges, not leaves only, as in Mark 11:12. A bare profession, even if it looks green, is not enough. Good intentions and good beginnings are good, but they are not enough. There must be fruit, a good heart and a good life, thoughts and desires, words and actions that agree with the Spirit, who gives the rich life of the vineyard (Galatians 5:22-23). The fruit must also match the means they were given, the care taken with them, and the God they belong to.

But instead of grapes, it brought forth wild grapes. That means not only no fruit, but bad fruit, worse than none, like the grapes of Sodom (Deuteronomy 32:32). Wild grapes are the works of a corrupt nature, fruit that grows from the old, wild root rather than the grafted branch, from a root of bitterness (Hebrews 12:15). Where grace does not work, corruption will. Wild grapes are also fake religious acts that look like grapes, but are sour or bitter, and so far from pleasing God that they anger him, as in Isaiah 1:11. Counterfeit graces are wild grapes.

Third, God calls them to judge the matter for themselves, whether he must not be cleared and they condemned (Isaiah 5:3-4). The case is set out plainly: “O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, please, between me and my vineyard.” This shows that God was being blamed for their condition. There was a dispute between him and them, but the truth was so clear on his side that he could ask their own consciences to decide.

He asks any citizen of Jerusalem, any man of Judah, who has reason and a fair sense of justice, to speak honestly. Can anyone name one thing God failed to do for them? “What more could have been done for my vineyard that I have not done in it?” He speaks here of the outward means of fruitfulness, the kind a vineyard keeper can provide. No one expects the keeper to change the nature of the vine. What else should have been done? They had everything needed to know their duty and be stirred up to do it.

No encouragement was missing. God used every proper argument to move them through hope or fear. They also had every opportunity they could want to do their duty, with new moons, sabbaths, and solemn feasts. They had the Scriptures, the living oracles, a standing ministry in the priests and Levites, and also the extra help of the prophets. No nation had statutes and judgments so right.

They also had no real excuse for acting so against God. Why should it have brought forth wild grapes when he looked for grapes? The sin of those who claim religion and enjoy the means of grace is one of the most unreasonable things in the world, and the blame for it lies entirely on the sinners themselves. “If you mock, you alone will bear it,” and you will have nothing to say for yourself in the judgment of the great day. God will prove that his ways are fair, and the sinner’s ways are crooked.

Isaiah has now pronounced the sentence, and it is a just one for their bad treatment of God (Isaiah 5:5, Isaiah 5:6). God says, in effect, “Since nothing can be said in excuse for this sin, I will tell you what I am determined to do to my vineyard. I will trouble myself with it no more. Since it has proved worthless, it will be treated as worthless. It will stop being a vineyard and become a wilderness. The church of the Jews will no longer be owned as his church. Their special standing will be taken away, and they will become lo-ammi, not my people.”

First, they will no longer be set apart as a special people, but will be treated like everyone else. God says, “I will take away its hedge,” and then it will quickly be eaten bare and left like common ground. Because they mixed themselves with the nations, they were rightly scattered among them.

Second, they will no longer be protected as God’s people, but will be left exposed. God will not only let the wall decay, he will break it down. He will remove their defenses, and then their enemies, who have long waited for a chance to harm them, will easily trample them down.

Third, they will no longer look like a vineyard, or like a church and commonwealth. They will be leveled and laid waste. This was fulfilled when Jerusalem, because of them, was plowed like a field (Micah 3:12).

Fourth, no more care will be given to them by the rulers or ministers, the workers and keepers of the vineyard. It will not be pruned or dug, but everything will grow wild. Only thorns and briars will come up, the results of sin and the curse (Genesis 3:18). When error and corruption, vice and immorality, are left unchecked, with no warning, rebuke, or restraint, the vineyard is left untended. Then it soon becomes like the vineyard of a foolish man, all covered with thorns.

Fifth, the final sorrow is that the dew of heaven will be withheld. He who controls the clouds will command them to give no rain, and that alone is enough to turn it into a desert. God, in righteous judgment, withholds his grace from those who have long received it without fruit. The whole matter comes to this, those who would not bear good fruit will bear none. The curse of barrenness is the punishment for the sin of barrenness, as in Mark 11:14.

This had a partial fulfillment in Jerusalem’s destruction by the Chaldeans, a full fulfillment in the final rejection of the Jews, and it is often fulfilled when God’s Spirit leaves people who have long resisted him. It is also seen when the gospel is removed from places that have long been a reproach to it, even while it was an honor to them. It is no loss to God to lay waste his vineyard, for he can, whenever he pleases, turn a wilderness into a fruitful field. When he strips a vineyard bare, it is only as he did with the garden of Eden, which, after man lost his place there by sin, was soon reduced to ordinary ground.

Now comes the explanation of the parable, or the key to it (Isaiah 5:7). The vineyard means the house of Israel, the whole people joined together as one church and commonwealth. The vines, the pleasant plants, mean the men of Judah, whom God had treated kindly and for whom he expected a fitting return.

The grapes he looked for, and the wild grapes that appeared, point to the fruit God expected from them. He looked for justice and righteousness, meaning honest dealing among the people and strict justice from the rulers. This was reasonable to expect from a people given such good laws and rules of justice (Deuteronomy 4:8). But the reality was very different. Instead of justice, there was oppression; instead of righteousness, the cries of the oppressed.

Everything was carried by shouting and force, not by fairness and according to the merits of each case. It is a sad thing when wickedness takes the place of justice (Ecclesiastes 3:16). It is also a sad thing for the soul when God looks for humility, gentleness, patience, love, and a low view of the world, but finds pride, anger, discontent, hatred, and contempt for God. Instead of prayer and praise, he finds cursing and swearing, which greatly offend him.

Some older writers apply this to the Jews in Christ’s time. God looked for righteousness, meaning that they should receive and welcome Christ, but instead there was a cry, the cry of “Crucify him, crucify him.”