Isaiah chapter 05

CHAPTER V.

“ The Song of the Vineyard.”

THE purport of this fifth chapter may be taken as summed up in the opening sentence of verse 25 : “ Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people.” The chapter sets forth the grounds on which God should act the part of an enemy to Israel. But the form in which this is done is peculiar, and the lessons conveyed are deeply instructive. The form is one of those “ divers manners ” spoken of by Paul in Heb. i. 1, and referred to by God Himself when He speaks of having “ used similitudes ” by the ministry of the prophets (Hos. vi. 5 : xii.).

It is a form that illustrates a method of inspiration unknown and unsuspected by many in our day who can only recognise inspiration where there is a specific assertion of divine authorship, as when the phrase, “ Thus saith the Lord,” occurs. We do not refer to the employment of parable but to the apparent human personality of the speaker. The prophet appears as the personal writer and mediator. “ Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard.” Is it Isaiah then to whom we listen in the song following ? Superficial critics—“ higher ” or otherwise—would say so, but without true reason. To Isaiah, truly, we listen, but not to Isaiah as a mere human impressionist, for that would be to listen to a man who might be unreliable in divine matters. It is to Isaiah used as an instrument of divine utterance, as the composition shows, for no sooner has Isaiah told us the subject of his song than the divine mentality glowing within his consciousness breaks through as the sun from behind a cloud, and expresses itself in the first person : “ Judge I pray you between me and my vineyard . . . the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel.” The personal Isaiah prologue is but the form in which the Spirit of God introduces what is about to be said.

There is a remarkable illustration of this in Jeremiah, in which the prophet is commanded to go and say something that appears as his personal utterance. “ Say this word unto them. Let mine eyes run down night and day with tears. . . . If I go forth into the

field, then behold the slain with the sword, and if I enter into the citv, then behold them that are sick with famine. . . . Hast thou utterly rejected Judah ? Hath thy soul lothed Zion ? Why hast thou smitten us and there is no healing ? ” (Jer. xiv. 17-19). The fact is there is no fixed form for the expression of inspiration. As the ways of God in nature are endless in their diversity, so there is endless variation in the “ divers manners ” in which He “ spake in time past through the prophets unto the fathers.” It is for this reason that the Bible never repeats itself. The evidence of inspiration is not to be found by the microscopical study of sentences, but in those wide- sweeping considerations that bear on a subject as a whole, such as the attitude of Jesus to “ the scriptures,” his recognition of their divine and unfailing character, and the express allegations of the apostles that they originated not in the will of man, but in the movement of the Holy Spirit, and were consequently “ all given by inspiration of God.”

The parable of the vineyard in Isaiah v. is not exactly the same as the parable of the vineyard employed by Christ, though the subject is the same. In the case of the latter, it was the behaviour of the keepers of the vineyard that was in question. They withheld the fruit from the owner of the vineyard : the fruit itself was assumed to be good. In the Isaiah parable, it is the fruit that is at fault : “ He looked that it should bring forth grapes and it brought forth wild grapes.” The meaning is, the bad character of the people : “ He looked for judgment, but behold oppression ; for righteousness, but behold a cry ” (verse 7). The message enters into details which show us God’s estimate of human behaviour on various points : “ Woe to them that join house to house and lay field to field till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.” It is no new thing to amass property and establish monoplies. God’s disapprobation of such a policy may be forgotten, but it is here re­corded, and may in our day be seen in the desolate state of Palestine thus foretold : “ Of a truth, many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant. Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah ’’ (verses 9-10). That is, a land that was famed for its fertility—" flowing with milk and honey,” would become so sterile that it would only be cultivated at a loss.

Avarice is odious to men, but here is a higher consideration : it is offensive to God, and his "woe” is recorded. The fact has little weight with the general run of mankind. They do not see in the course of a certain limited number of years that evil comes of it, and therefore they harden themselves, “ Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is set in them to do evil ” (Ecc. viii. 11). But things work themselves out. “ Though a sinner do evil an hundred times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God ” (Ecc. viii. 12).

It is unreasonable and bad that men should bend their strength to the piling up of gigantic wealth. Even natural thinkers see it, and have proposed a legal limit to income—but the notion is not likely to be taken up. When the Kingdom of God comes, the taking up of right notions will not depend upon the people. The right notions will be enforced by the law that goes forth from Zion. The saints will possess the earth, but it will not be in the spirit of those who add “ house to house and field to field ” ; it will not be for self­aggrandisement, and the extinction of others : it will be in the spirit of men who love their neighbour as themselves, and who will use their power for the blessedness of all entrusted to their care.

Next, we have drink and jollity condemned, along with the distaste for wisdom that usually results from such proclivities ; “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink : that continue until night until wine inflame them. And the harp and the viol and the tabret and pipe and wine are in their feasts ; but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands. Therefore my people are gone into captivity because they have no knowledge ” (verses 11-13). These things were not written as history merely. They are on record as the everlasting expression of God’s views of man’s ways. There are people who see no objection to the use of strong drink and in the attendant musical convivialities. ‘‘We cannot see any harm,” is the motto on their side. “ Woe unto them,” is the utterance on God’s side. Wise men will never hesitate in the choice between such divergent issues. It is the lesson of universal experience that strong drink and indulgence in frivolous music undermine all taste for the sobrieties of wisdom. Nothing more infallibly brings men into the state described by Solomon in the Proverbs, in more places than one : “ They hate knowledge : they do not choose the fear of the Lord : they will none of my counsel: they despise all my reproof.” No doubt, the exercitations of folly are agreeable for the time (otherwise they would not be indulged in) : but what is the end ? Solomon well says : “ The laughter of fools is as the crackling of thorns under a pot ” ; ashes and desolation are the outcome. Israel have experienced this in a long dispersion, which, if men had only wisdom to rightly interpret it, is a standing protest against the sensationalisms of wine, music, and the dance, as well as the condemnation of all idolatries.

“ Therefore hell hath enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure : and their glory and their multitude and their pomp shall descend into it. And the mean man shall be brought down and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled. But the Lord of Hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and Goe who is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness ” (verses 14-16). Not the popular hell, of course, but the Bible hell— sheol—the grave—invisibility—oblivion. Destruction personified, as when “ Destruction and death say, We have heard of the fame of wisdom ” (Job xxviii. 22). Destruction opened a wide mouth and devoured the merry crowds to whom Isaiah was sent in expostula­tion : they disappeared in the profound. The visitor to Israel’s desolate hills may realise to the uttermost how fully the prophet’s words have come to pass. A step further forward will see the disappearance of British, French and Italian revelries as well, and the substitution of a new civilization among the populations sobered by judgment. “ The Lord of hosts shall be exalted.” But first must “ the day of the Lord be upon every one that is proud and lofty and upon every one that is lifted up . . . and upon all the ships of Tarshish and upon all pleasant pictures . . . the Lord alone shall 

be exalted in that day ” (Isaiah ii. 17-21). Drink and music and dancing will hide their heads when men " shall go into the holes of the rocks and into the caves of the earth for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.” Israel have had their taste of this. The turn of other nations is coming. The judgment of God is “ upon the Jew first and also on the Gentile ” (Rom. ii. 9-10).

“ Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat ” (verse 17—of chap. v.). That is, the meek of the earth will live in security and peace when the wicked are cut off; and the surplus property of the wicked wealthy will pass into the hands of others. The lambs are the meek : the fat ones are rich sinners. It is the expressive figure of a change which is put in plainer terms when it is said (chapter xxix. 19), “ The meek shall increase their joy in the Lord and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel, when the terrible one is brought to nought and the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for iniquity shall be cut off.”

“Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope : that say, Let him make speed and hasten his work that we may see it, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it ” (verses 18-19). We have here figurative action and characteristic speech on the part of the scornful class in Israel, who were just as much in the majority as they are in Gentile lands to-day. The figure is that of men dragging a loaded conveyance by means of ropes or harness. This is not a common mode of transit in Western lands, but it is common in the East. When men thus convey loaded carts, it is on business. The load in the figure is “ iniquity ” and “ sin.” The harnessings are vanity (or vain or foolish ideas), yet put on with the strength of a cart rope. The general picture is that of men following sin as their avocation, with talent and vigour, and whose only response to the expostulations of righteousness is insulting satire. “ We will believe when we see.” “ When the judgment comes, we may get out of the way : when the Kingdom comes, perhaps we may manage to tip the doorkeeper.” There is no lack of such scoffers now. Their end will be like that of the scoffers at the siege of Jerusalem, who said to Josephus that the prophets were old women : they » miserably perished ” with every attendant circumstance of suffer­ing and shame. It is for the wise to be patient : “ The needy shall not always be forgotten : the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever ” (Psa. ix. 18).

“Woe unto them that call evil, good, and good, evil: that put darkness for light and light for darkness : that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter ! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink—which justify the wicked for reward and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him ” (verses 20-23). This is the same class described in another way, or rather,another aspect of their wickedness exhibited —an aspect that makes them dangerous men as well as bad men. They do not honestly own up to being wicked. If they practise evil, it is on the plea that it is really “ good.” They would not be con­sidered bad men for the world. They have a philosophy that enables them to be at peace with their own consciences at least. They flatter themselves that they are “ broad ” in their views : “ liberal ” in their principles : “ enlightened ” in their ideas. They are able to dismiss all scruples as to divine law : and all objections on the score of principle as “ prejudice.” By their sophistries, they not only deceive themselves, but lead many to destruction. They lure women to dishonour, and beguile the trustful to ruin in business matters. Nothing stands in the way of self-interest. They will praise the vile and slander the honourable if they can make it “ pay.” And all their ways are smoothed over with honeyed words of deceit.

“ Woe unto them ” saith the terrible word of God. “As the fire devoureth the stubble and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness and their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.” There is nothing more melancholy than the end of a sinner. Who bemoans him ? Who misses him—(unless it be his companions in folly) ? Who is not relieved when the land is delivered from his presence, and his shadow no longer pollutes the sun ? If thus it is in the individual cases that illustrate the principle every other day, how must it be when “ the destruction of the wicked and the transgressor shall be together and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed ? ” (Is. i. 28). " The day that cometh shall burn them up that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. . . . Evil doers shall be cut off, but they that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” It will not then seem the light thing it now is in the eyes of men to “ cast away the law of the Lord and despise the word of the Holy One of Israel.”

It is for the wise to know wisdom in advance, and not drift helplessly to its discovery with a foolish generation, engulfed in a common destruction. Wisdom lies in the discernment of God’s views as revealed. By this standard, the common practical repudiation of the divine law is a crime. We may read the heinousness of it in the words next written (verse 25), “ Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people and he hath stretched forth his hand against them and hath smitten them, and the hills did tremble and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” The destruction of a divinely-constituted nation and its prolonged prostration to this hour is the unmistakable indication to those who can see it, of the divine estimate of the habits of thought and speech that are as much in vogue to-day as they were in the midst of Israel.

In Isaiah’s day, the coming retribution was still a matter of futurity. Its advent is foreshown in many a graphic figure—none more telling than that with which this chapter concludes : ‘‘He will lift up an ensign to the nations—(that is, wave a flag to arrest their attention and summon them)-—and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth, and behold they shall come with speed swiftly.” The Gentile nations were to be used as weapons of destruction against Israel. We look back and see it has been done. The destruction of Israel has not been miraculous. It has been the natural result of human rapacity with an opportunity given. Yet how constantly the formula : " I have scattered them.” Even in the chapter before us, it is “ his anger,” his “ stretched-out hand ” that is the ultimate cause of the calamity.

The nations, though filling their part, are only used as instru­ments. They are unconscious of the divine ingredient in the process.

They say “ Our hand is high : the Lord hath not done all this.” Whereas the truth lies in the shape they deny. If their hand is high, it is because it has been divinely permitted for a divine purpose. “ Who gave Jacob for a spoil and Israel to the robbers ? Did not the Lord ?—he against whom we have sinned. Because they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient to his law. Therefore he hath poured upon them the fury of his anger and the strength of battle ” (xlii. 24). The nations have been but as so many saws, axes, and hammers in a work of demolition which has been a divine work. This is the aspect of the matter laid stress on in Isaiah x. 15 ; and it is most important to have it continually in view, otherwise we shall err in our reading of the whole course of history. It is a combination of the human and divine that the natural man has a difficulty in receiving, and yet the discernment of which is essential to enlightened views on many matters : e.g., the death of Christ, the meaning of our own lives, etc.

That Israel’s troubles were not miraculous made it worse for Israel. To be given over to “ the tender mercies of the wicked ” is far worse than being subjected to direct divine chastisement. Israel would have found it a cause of pride as well as comfort if only angels had been their enemies ; to be subjected to the power of man was to be afflicted and dishonoured in its bitterest form. David, who had experience of man, knew the difference between falling into the hands of God and the hands of man, when invited to choose his own punish­ment at the close of his reign (2 Sam. xxiv. 13-14). It shows the fearfulness of Israel’s punishment that they have been handed over to the power of Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Latins, and Russians: “ 0 Lord, thou has ordained them for judgment. 0 mighty God, thou hast established them for correction ” (Hab. i. 12).

At the time Isaiah prophesied, they were latent in the quiet sea of nations. The land of the heathen contained in the populations thereof the elements of trouble, but those elements had to be organised and the trouble evoked. They must have remained innocuous against Israel if God had not stirred them up and opened their way in the manner that is easy for Him. This prophecy shows us the divine operator, at work as it were : shaking a signal-flag and hissing for the nations to come, as a man hisses for a dog. By the light of history, we see them respond in successive waves of irresistible assault, as indicated in the next verse (27) : “ None shall be weary or stumble among them : none shall slumber nor sleep : neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken.”

This is not intended to intimate that literally and individually, the soldiers of the enemy advancing to Israel’s destruction would be incapable of weariness or slumber, and have no accident to their accoutrements. It is a hyperbolic declaration of the certainty of the execution of their work, akin to what Jeremiah was instructed to say concerning the Babylonish besiegers of Jerusalem : “ Though ye (Israel) had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent and burn this city with fire ” (Jer. xxxvii. 10). In the same way are we to understand the remaining description of their prowess (Isaiah v. 28). ‘ Whose arrows are sharp and all their bows bent : their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind. Their roaring shall be like a lion : they shall roar like young lions, and lay hold of the prey and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it. And in that day. they shall roar against them (Israel) like the roaring of the sea.”

Any one reading the particulars of the Roman invasion of Pales­tine supplied so abundantly in the narrative of Josephus (an eye-wit­ness) will have the illustration before his eyes of what is literally meant by these high figures cf inspiration. The attendant circum­stances of that invasion were of a character that could only be adequately expressed by such bold word-pictures. The same things happened in the many previous calamities of Israel’s experience, but not on the same scale or with the same terrible intensity. We either lack fulness of historical information of previous cases—(such as the destruction of the land by Nebuchadnezzar), or else the events of the Roman destruction exceeded all others in their horrors—which is probable from the words of Christ (Matt. xxiv. 21-22).

The closing sentence of the chapter touches off the sequel in one vigorous stroke : “ If one look into the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.” When

Vespasian and Titus had done their work, a smiling land had been turned into a blackened waste, and all order and authority had been extinguished in the extermination of the bulk of the inhabitants. Had we been there to see, it would have been like looking on the site of a conflagration the morning after the fire had reduced a mass of noble buildings to ashes, only the scene would have been far more extensive and the circumstances infinitely more tragic than anything connected with the biggest fire that happens in war or peace. A whole land involved in “ darkness and sorrow ; ” the light of public life vanished from all high places ; “ the light darkened in the heavens thereof.”

To speak of the high places of a community as the heavens thereof, is a common and effective figure throughout the prophetic scriptures. It is based upon the natural relation of the physical heavens as the upper or ruling sphere of the world natural. This is so natural a subject of political figure that all public writers fall into its use in the easiest manner in speaking of the relations of the ruling powers. How often do we read in press editorials of the “ clouded state of the political sky ” when governments quarrel ; or the eclipse of some luminary when some high personage falls from state, or the rising of “ a bright particular star ” when some new genius makes his advent in any realm of public life. That the public habit in this respect may have its partial origin in Bible allusion is probable, but this is not sufficient to explain it. The Bible is not so influential with the world as to stamp its speech by the mere force of its usage. Natural fitness is much more powerful with men in such a matter than Bible custom.

And the fitness in this case is manifest. It is a natural, a beautiful, and a scriptural style of figure that conceives of a system of things among men—whether in the smaller phase of individual and family life, or the larger phase of political systems—as a universe of heaven and earth, with their subordinate features and phenomena of sun, moon, stars, sea, rain, sunshine, storm, calm, etc. As the one affects us literally, so the other affects us figuratively. Heavens and earth are the whole system in each case. As the heavens rule the earth literal, so the figurative heavens—(or authorities)—rule those under them, who are the earth. What the sun is in the system of nature; the fountain of prosperity and light, whatever it may be, is in the economy of human life large or small. In general, the sun is the symbol of prosperity, but may have a special application to a ruling person, as in the case of Joseph’s dream of Jacob as the sun ; darkness standing for calamity and oppression, or for ignorance, as the case may be; the stars as the lesser luminaries of our life; the air for the social or political atmosphere which we breathe; tempest for adverse circumstances causing stress ; the sea for the people or for the lower elements of our position, according as it is applied politically or to individual experience.

That these things are true in scriptural usage is shown by the following illustrations : “I make new heavens and, new earth is a form of speech employed to describe generally God’s purpose to “ make Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy ” (Isaiah Ixv. 17-18). That this means the recovery of the old Jerusalem is shown by the further statement, “ The voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her nor the voice of crying ” (verse 19). Peter (2 Pet. iii. 13) expounds the promise thus : “ new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,” showing it is a system of things with moral relations, and therefore a system composed of people, for the physical universe has no moral relations : it is equally the platform for righteousness or wickedness as the case may be.

“ I will shake the heavens and the earth shall remove out of her place,” is the figurative description of God’s overthrow of Babylon by the instrumentality of the Medes and Persians (Isaiah xiii., com­pare verses 1, 13, and 17).

The revolution in human affairs by which human systems are overthrown and the Kingdom of God established is thus described : “ I will shake the heavens and the earth, and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen ” (Hag. iii. 22). The sense of the Hebrew “ wav ” (translated “ and ”) is here expletive rather than conjunctive, and has the sense of the English “even" rather than “besides.” The same form of speech is employed earlier in the prophecy (ii. 6), with the addition of the words “ yet once,’’ which Paul says are to be under stood as “ Yet once more,” and as signifying “ the removal of the things shaken ” (Heb. xii. 26). “Yet once it is a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come."

A more limited figure is the employment of sun, moon, and stars, day and night, in foretelling prosperity or adversity for the things and systems spoken of. The extinction of the power of Egypt is thus described in Ezekiel xxx. 18 : “At Tehaphnehes also, the day shall be darkened when I shall break there the yokes of Egypt and the pomp of her strength shall cease in her : as for her, a cloud shall comer her, and her daughters shall go into captivity." Again, in Ezek. xxxii. 7 : “And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven and make the stars thereof dark : I will cover the sun with a cloud and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God.”

Under the same figure, the extinction of prophecy is foretold : “ Night shall be unto you that ye shall not have a vision : and it shall be dark unto you that ye shall not divine. And the sun shall go down over the prophets and the day shall be dark over them ” (Micah iii. 6).

So Israel’s everlasting and unclouded glory is foretold in these words: “ Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself : for the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light and thy God thy glory ” (Isaiah lx. 20).

Israel’s overthrow by Babylon is thus lamented : “ How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel” (Lam. ii. 1).

Jesus said of Capernaum that it was “ exalted unto heaven ” ; but would be “ brought down to hell ” (Matt. xi. 23); and of the coming dethronement of the power of the enemy: “ I saw Satan as light­ning fall from heaven ” (Luke x. 18).