Isaiah 5:1-7
God’s patient care toward His people obligates faithful fruit; persistent injustice invites His just removal of protection.
1 Let me sing for my well beloved a song of my beloved about his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.
2 He dug it up, gathered out its stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the middle of it, and also cut out a wine press in it. He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
3 “Now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard.
4 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Why, when I looked for it to yield grapes, did it yield wild grapes?
5 Now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be eaten up. I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down.
6 I will lay it a wasteland. It won’t be pruned or hoed, but it will grow briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.”
7 For the vineyard of Yahweh of Armies is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for justice, but, behold, oppression; for righteousness, but, behold, a cry of distress.
God’s patient care toward his people obligates faithful fruit; persistent injustice invites his just removal of protection.
To present a prophetic song exposing Judah as the LORD’s unfruitful vineyard and to justify divine judgment as the righteous response to covenant failure.
Agriculture and vineyards were central to the economy of ancient Judah. Isaiah uses a familiar agricultural image to describe God's relationship with His people.
The Song of the Vineyard and the Woes Against Covenant Corruption
Isaiah 5 declares that the LORD’s carefully cultivated vineyard has produced corrupt fruit, so he will remove its protection, pronounce woes over its sins, and summon judgment against those who rejected his word.