Judges 4-5. Deborah, and Barak, part 10: Israel is the Lord's vineyard; Isa 5.

Title: Judges 4-5. Deborah, and Barak, part 10: Israel is the Lord's vineyard; Isa 5.        

 

Announcements / opening prayer:

 

ISA 5:1 Let me sing now for my well-beloved

A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.

My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.

 

ISA 5:2 And He dug it all around, removed its stones [Canaanites],

And planted it with the choicest vine.

And He built a tower in the middle of it,

And hewed out a wine vat in it;

Then He expected it to produce good grapes,

But it produced only worthless ones.

 

ISA 5:3 "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,

Judge between Me and My vineyard.

 

ISA 5:4 "What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?

Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones?

 

ISA 5:5 "So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard:

I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed;

I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground.

 

ISA 5:6 "And I will lay it waste;

It will not be pruned or hoed,,

But briars and thorns will come up.

I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it."

 

‎Further pruning and hoeing would do it no good, but only lead to further disappointment. Again, this is why judgment must eventually come.

 

“I will charge the clouds,” is a dig at Baal, the so-called storm god whom the idolaters worshipped for the chance of good rains.

 

The northern kingdom of Israel would be destroyed and they would not return. The same would happen to Judah, though its final destruction would not happen until 70 AD. However, when we say final, we only mean for the time of all history until the Second coming of Christ through whom and in whom the Abrahamic Covenant would be fulfilled.

 

ISA 5:7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel [beth Yisrael], And the men of Judah His delightful plant [David's house]. Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; For righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.

 

The word translated "bloodshed" is only used here. It belongs to a verb that means to sweep and in this case to sweep away as in taking land and lives through the lust of greed [refer vs. 8]. We might render it injustice or oppression. As we see in the next verse, the injustice is described as greedily gobbling up land through extortion and trickery to the point where the rich hold vast estates and the poor have nowhere to live.

 

"He looked for justice, but behold, greedy oppression…"

 

God delighted in what He had done for Israel and for Judah through David. It shows us that God delights in giving and in blessing, and it also shows us that His giving and blessing does not guarantee that the believer, or in this case the nation of Israel, will bear fruit.

 

The cultivated vine turned into a wild vine, which has the outward appearance of a vine but produces no fruit. Verse seven ends the introduction to the prophecy and now follows six woes.

 

ISA 5:8 Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field, Until there is no more room, So that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!

 

Under the Mosaic law it is perfectly legal to purchase land and to have slaves, which are really indentured servants. The servants were released every Sabbath year (7 years) and all land was returned to its original owner every year of Jubilee (49 years or 7 Sabbath years). This is not a woe against capitalism but against greed.

 

Therefore, such covetousness was all the more reprehensible, because the law of Israel and provided so very stringently and carefully, that as far as possible there should be an equal distribution of the soil, and that hereditary family property should be inalienable.

 

The adherence of the Sabbath year had disappeared.

 

JER 34:14 (the Lord said)

"At the end of seven years each of you shall set free his Hebrew brother, who has been sold to you and has served you six years, you shall send him out free from you; but your forefathers did not obey Me, or incline their ear to Me."

 

Micah, Isaiah's contemporary, says the same thing.

 

MIC 2:1 Woe to those who scheme iniquity,

Who work out evil on their beds!

When morning comes, they do it,

For it is in the power of their hands.

 

MIC 2:2 They covet fields and then seize them,

And houses, and take them away.

They rob a man and his house,

A man and his inheritance.

 

MIC 2:3 Therefore, thus says the Lord,

"Behold, I am planning against this family a calamity

From which you cannot remove your necks;

And you will not walk haughtily,

For it will be an evil time.

 

[back to]

ISA 5:8 Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field, Until there is no more room, So that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!

 

ISA 5:9 In my ears the Lord of hosts has sworn, "Surely, many houses shall become desolate, Even great and fine ones, without occupants.

 

Why will they become desolate? Failure of crops produces famine, and this is followed by depopulation.

 

ISA 5:10 "For ten acres [tsemed: the area a man could plow in one day with a yoke of oxen] of vineyard will yield only one bath of wine[about 6 gallons], And a homer [10 ephahs] of seed will yield but an ephah of grain."

 

ISA 5:11 Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may pursue strong drink; Who stay up late in the evening that wine may inflame them!

 

ISA 5:12 And their banquets are accompanied by lyre and harp, by tambourine and flute, and by wine; But they do not pay attention to the deeds of the Lord, Nor do they consider the work of His hands.

 

Therefore judgment would overtake them in this blind, dull, and stupid animal condition.

 

ISA 5:13 Therefore My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge; And their honorable men are famished, And their multitude is parched with thirst.

 

ISA 5:14 Therefore, Sheol has enlarged its throat and opened its mouth without measure; And Jerusalem's splendor, her multitude, her din of revelry, and the jubilant within her, descend into it.

 

Sheol is shown here as greedy and unable to be satisfied, much like those who walk in death on their way to her.

 

It is a terrible thing not to be satisfied. Excessive alcohol does this as does all pursuits of the world in opposition to God. Sheol is greedy and so is man who does not walk in the life that God has graciously granted to him, the sinner. Sheol is never satisfied and neither is the walking dead man who goes from one thing to the next, one person to the next, one relationship to the next, one dollar to the next in the search of being satisfied. He will never find it, and he becomes the next fodder for Sheol who is also never satisfied.

 

HAB 2:3

Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man,

So that he does not stay at home [out searching].

He enlarges his appetite like Sheol,

And he is like death, never satisfied.

He also gathers to himself all nations

And collects to himself all peoples [no one is immune].

 

Sheol is a word associated with shaal, "to ask or demand." It is the abode of shades, to which everything on earth is summoned. It is the irresistible and inexorable demand made upon every earthly thing.

 

Everything on the surface of the earth is summoned to Sheol. Essentially it is the divinely appointed curse which demands and swallows up everything upon the earth. God became a man in order to free us from it. Christ descended into it and pronounced His total victory over it as He released every Old Testament saint from it while those who had rejected him remained awaiting final judgment.

 

The imagery of Sheol enlarging its throat and opening its mouth so wide that it can't be measured leads us to imagine that generation after generation do not learn by watching their elders being sucked into the abyss. It also releases the image into our minds that they lived as dead people who slowly walked towards the yawning jaws of Sheol and the noise of their revelry and their jubilance descend in the darkness and then the deafening silence that screams of judgment.

 

ISA 5:14 Therefore, Sheol has enlarged its throat and opened its mouth without measure; And Jerusalem's splendor, her multitude, her din of revelry, and the jubilant within her, descend into it.

 

ISA 5:15 So the common man will be humbled, and the man of importance abased, The eyes of the proud also will be abased.

 

ISA 5:16 But the Lord of hosts will be exalted in judgment, And the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.

 

ISA 5:17 Then the lambs will graze as in their pasture, And strangers will eat in the waste places of the wealthy.