Isaiah stands up to sing a love song about a vineyard, and his audience would have known the tune. Four verses in, the song turns into a lawsuit, and the listeners discover they have just been asked to pass sentence on themselves. Then come six woes, and the most quoted warning in the book.
A study in Isaiah 5 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 17 min read
A Song For My Wellbeloved
Twice already Isaiah has mentioned a vineyard in passing — the daughter of Zion left like a hut in one, and leaders accused of having eaten one up. Now he gives it a song.
“Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.”
Isaiah 5:1, 2
It opens as a love song — a friend singing on behalf of his beloved — and the crowd would have settled in for something pleasant. Vineyard songs were a known form, and they were usually about romance.
Verse 2 is an inventory of trouble taken, and every item costs somebody a season. He fenced it. He gathered out the stones — anyone who has cleared ground knows what that sentence hides. He planted not just any vine but the choicest. He built a tower, which means he intended to guard it long term, and he cut a winepress into the rock, which means he expected enough fruit to be worth pressing on site.
Nothing was withheld and nothing was rushed. Then: it brought forth wild grapes. Not thorns, not nothing — grapes, of a sort. Small, sour, useless for wine. The vineyard produced exactly the fruit it would have produced if none of the work had been done at all.
Judge Betwixt Me And My Vineyard
Then the singer stops singing and turns to the audience.
“And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?”
Isaiah 5:3, 4
This is the oldest trick in prophetic preaching and it never stops working. Nathan used it on David — tell a man a story about somebody else, get his verdict, then tell him whose story it was. Isaiah has his hearers judging a case before they know they are the defendant.
And the question in verse 4 is one of the most remarkable God ever asks. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? He is inviting them to name something. Any omission, any shortfall on the owner’s part, and the vineyard has a defense. Nobody names anything, because there is nothing to name.
That question is worth sitting with rather than reading past. It rules out the excuse that is always available to people who have not produced what was expected of them — that they were not given enough to work with.
I Will Take Away The Hedge
“And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.”
Isaiah 5:5, 6
Read carefully what the judgment actually consists of, because it is not what people usually assume.
God does not say He will burn the vineyard, or uproot it, or trample it Himself. He says He will take away the hedge and break down the wall — and then two passive verbs follow: it shall be eaten up, it shall be trodden down. He removes the protection; other things do the damage. The rest of verse 6 is the same shape: no pruning, no digging, no rain. Every clause is God ceasing to do something. The briers and thorns are not sent. They simply arrive, the way briers do in ground nobody is tending.
This is the principle the rest of Scripture works with. When Satan complains about Job, his complaint is about a fence: “Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?” (Job 1:10). Protection is the normal condition of those who walk with God, and withdrawal of it is the judgment — not a blow, but an absence.
What the hedge is gets named elsewhere, and the answer is striking. Jesus retold this very parable in Jerusalem in the last week of His life, and Ellen White gives the key to it: “In the parable the householder represented God, the vineyard the Jewish nation, and the hedge the divine law which was their protection” (The Desire of Ages, p. 596). The hedge is the law.
She states the same thing directly elsewhere: “He rules over His kingdom with diligence and care, and He has built a hedge—the Ten Commandments—about His subjects to preserve them from the results of transgression” (Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, p. 454).
That changes how the threat in verse 5 reads. If the hedge is God’s law, then taking it away is not God building a new instrument of punishment; it is God letting go of people who have already let go of it. A man who casts away the law — which is exactly the charge in verse 24 — has walked out of the only shelter there was. He is not struck. He is simply, and immediately, unfenced.
He Looked For Judgment, But Behold Oppression
“For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.”
Isaiah 5:7
The reveal, and the sentence has already been passed by the audience themselves.
The second half of the verse is a pair of near-misses. In Hebrew the two words in each pair sound almost identical — the difference between what God planted and what grew is a single consonant. He looked for judgment and got oppression; He looked for righteousness and got a cry. That is the wild grape in one line: not the opposite of what was planted, but a near likeness of it. Something that looks like justice from a distance and turns out to be its counterfeit.
And note the last word. A cry — the sound a person makes when something is being done to them. God listens for righteousness in a nation and hears somebody screaming.
Woe: House To House, Field To Field
“Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!”
Isaiah 5:8
The first of six woes, and it is about property. Under the law, land in Israel was not really sold — it returned to the family at the jubilee, because the land belonged to God and families were tenants. Joining house to house until you stand alone in the midst of the earth is the deliberate undoing of that arrangement, one purchase at a time.
Nothing here is illegal. Each transaction was presumably willing, or willing enough. What Isaiah names is the direction of travel, and the loneliness at the end of it — a man with no neighbors because he bought them all out. The sentence fits the crime exactly: many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant, and ten acres of vineyard will give a single bath of wine.
Woe: They Regard Not The Work Of The LORD
“Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! And the harp, and the viol, 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.”
Isaiah 5:11, 12
Early in the morning until late at night — a full working day given to it. But the charge lands in verse 12, and it is not the drinking. It is what the drinking crowds out: they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands.
Consider is the word from chapter 1, where the ox knew its owner and Israel did not consider. The problem is the same one, in a different costume. A person can be fully occupied, surrounded by music, and completely unavailable for the one thing being asked of him.
Because They Have No Knowledge
“Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.”
Isaiah 5:13
Not because they were outnumbered, and not because their walls were thin. Because they have no knowledge. A nation with the Scriptures in its own language went into exile for want of knowing what was in them — which is a warning that transfers rather easily to anyone whose Bible is more owned than read.
Then, in the middle of the wreckage, one verse turns upward:
“But the LORD of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.”
Isaiah 5:16
It is the refrain of chapter 2 again — the lofty humbled, the LORD alone exalted — and here it is stated as the purpose of the whole proceeding. God is not merely reacting. Something about Him is shown in judgment that would not otherwise be visible, and Isaiah calls that being sanctified in righteousness.
Woe: Drawing Sin With A Cart Rope
“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!”
Isaiah 5:18, 19
An arresting picture: men in harness, hauling their own sin along behind them like a loaded cart. Nobody is dragging them. The effort is theirs, the rope is theirs, and the load is what they have chosen to pull.
And verse 19 gives them a voice. Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it. This is mockery of the delay — if God is going to judge, let Him get on with it. It is the taunt of people who have concluded, from the fact that nothing has happened yet, that nothing is going to. Peter answers the same voices centuries later, and so does the whole later half of Isaiah.
Woe: Calling Evil Good
“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!”
Isaiah 5:20
The best known verse in the chapter, and the structure of it repays attention. Three pairs, each reversed in both directions — evil for good and good for evil, darkness for light and light for darkness. It is not a slide into wickedness. It is an exchange of labels, carried out in both directions at once, which is a deliberate and rather demanding piece of work.
Notice also the third pair: bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. The first two pairs are moral and the third is a matter of taste — and taste is the one you cannot argue with. That is the end state Isaiah is describing. Not people who know they are calling evil good, but people whose palate has changed, so that the wrong thing genuinely tastes right to them.
Woe: Wise In Their Own Eyes
“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!”
Isaiah 5:21-23
Verse 21 is the shortest woe and it sits at the root of the others. Wise in their own eyes — self-assessment accepted as fact. A man who grades his own paper will pass, and once he has passed, every warning arriving from outside is filed as a misunderstanding.
The bitter joke in verse 22 is that these men do have strength and skill; the words are genuine praise, aimed at the wrong target. Mighty — at drinking. Men of strength — at mixing drinks. Real capacity, spent on nothing, and verse 23 shows the bill: verdicts for sale, and the righteous man’s righteousness taken from him in court.
He Will Hiss Unto Them From The End Of The Earth
“Therefore 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.”
Isaiah 5:24
Here is the summary charge under all six woes, and it is a single sentence: they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. The land-grabbing, the drinking, the mocking, the inverted labels, the sold verdicts — all of it is downstream of that. And it closes the circle with verse 5. They cast away the law; God takes away the hedge. Those are the same event described from two sides.
Then Isaiah shows how the removal of the hedge is carried out in practice:
“And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly: None shall be weary nor 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.”
Isaiah 5:26, 27
The word translated hiss is the sound a beekeeper makes to call a swarm, or a herdsman whistling for stock. God does not raise an army; He whistles, and one comes. The empire that will end Judah is, in this picture, livestock answering a call from the other end of the earth.
Verse 27 is the detail that makes it frightening. Nobody tires. Nobody stumbles. Nobody sleeps. Not a belt comes loose, not a sandal strap breaks. Set that beside the vineyard, which had every advantage and produced sour fruit, and the contrast is exact: the nation that had everything failed, and the instrument of its judgment is flawless down to its shoelaces.
The chapter ends in the dark — “if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof” (5:30). But one line in verse 25 is worth carrying forward, because it will recur four more times in the chapters ahead: “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” It reads at first as pure threat — the hand raised to strike again. It is also, and Isaiah will make this explicit later, a hand that has not been withdrawn.
The next study takes up chapter 6, where Isaiah sees the throne in the year that King Uzziah died, and discovers what he is himself before he is given anything to say.
