August 2024

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 5: The Vineyard of Yahweh

Here we shall continue our discussion of this second vision which had been recorded in the words of the prophet Isaiah, which runs through four chapters of the book, and now upon our coming to chapter 5 we are nearing its end. This chapter contains a rather brief song of a vineyard, and it is within this context that we should also consider the parable of the vineyard, as well as the parable of the vineyard workers, which are found in the Gospel of Christ. This song is a song of lamentation, accompanied with a message of a coming punishment. In the words of the later prophet Jeremiah, Yahweh further laments His vineyard, and then even later, Yahshua Christ makes an example of a portion of its history, however in His Gospel it is also evident that the lamentation shall ultimately turn to wrath, and that wrath is expressed in even stronger terms in His Revelation. In these messages it is fully evident that the vineyard is an allegory for the society of His people, in which the grapes are metaphors for the people themselves.

As we had discussed in Isaiah chapter 3, where the punishment of the people of Judah for their sins was first announced by the prophet, it is evident that the Patterns of Societal Collapse which had been described there are aspects of that punishment, and they had evidently already come upon Judah even before Isaiah had begun writing. They are the inevitable result of sin which would lead to the breakdown of society and its ultimate punishment. So in the course of the execution of that punishment, the great, wise and mighty men of the society would be neutralized, in one way or another. Then while the youth are magnified and the women caught up in feminism, they would all be humbled by the violence of their enemies. The men would end up dead, and the women, scarred with their own excess of debauchery, would be laid bare in the face of their enemies.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 4: Patterns of Societal Collapse

Isaiah chapter 2 had opened with a promise of hope, which was evidently a vision for some time far off in the future, since it was followed by a much more immediate condemnation and imminent judgment of the people of Israel of Isaiah’s own time. This condemnation was for greater Israel, since it had made references to the cedars of Lebanon, the oaks of Bashan, which were allegories for various of the tribes of ancient Israel, and also to the ships of Tarshish, the ships by which the children of Israel had spread themselves abroad. In this condemnation they were condemned for their sorceries, for their idolatry, for their haughtiness, and because they had pleased themselves in the children of strangers, which is fornication or race-mixing.

Therefore we must understand that since there was a message of hope which had accompanied the condemnation of Israel for their sins, that Yahweh God had never intended to destroy Israel entirely, but rather, His intention was, and is, to punish them for their sins, so that they would ultimately conform to His will and through their conformance, He could fulfill the things which He had promised to their fathers. As we also hope to have illustrated, it is very likely that by the time Isaiah had written these words, the prophet Amos had already completed the course of his prophecy, and in Amos chapter 3 we read: “1 Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, 2 You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

In Isaiah chapter 1 we hope to have elucidated the commonality of the opening message of the prophet with those of his contemporaries, Hosea and Amos. In verses 2 through 5 the prophet upbraids the children of Israel for rebelling against Yahweh their God, and departing from Him. Then in verses 6 through 9 the inevitable result of that rebellion is described, where strangers, people of other nations and races, have devoured their land. This prophecy also parallels other similar prophecies of Scripture, both contemporary and remote. One example is found in Joel chapter 1, who wrote in reference to the land of Israel some short time after the deportations of Israel and much of Judah by the Assyrians, and said “4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.”

But then this also parallels another example, a more distant prophecy in Revelation chapter 9, where there is a vision of the hordes of Arabia who tormented the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years: “2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. 5 And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.”

In the opening presentation of this commentary on Isaiah we had sought to focus upon the historical circumstances in which the prophet had begun his ministry. So with the evidence we presented, Jonah had already prophesied some decades earlier, and it seems that the prophet Hosea had already begun his ministry, which, like that of Isaiah, had also endured to the time of Hezekiah. The prophet Amos had also already begun, even if his ministry had evidently not endured for as long as that of Hosea. Now along comes Isaiah, in what appears to be the final years of the rule of Uzziah king of Judah, some time before 740 BC. We have also explained, from evidence which Isaiah provides in chapters 7 and 8 of his prophecy, that he is a man a Judah, that he was married and had at least one child, and he was of some importance to the degree where he could have the attention of the king, and he could command scribes and priests. So it seems that Isaiah may even have been a man of rank in the court of the king before he started his prophetic ministry.

In the opening words of his prophecy, in the first nine verses, there is a blanket condemnation of the entire nation of Israel, which includes both Israel and Judah, and it is not entirely certain that anyone in Israel proper had yet been taken into captivity, but it is evident in the inscriptions that many Israelites dwelling north of Israel proper, in lands already captured by the Assyrians, had most likely been taken, and as we have also seen, as early as the time of Ahab the Israelites had been sending men north to fight against the Assyrians, in league with the Syrians of Damascus and other towns which at one time had been governed by Judah. So concerning this struggle, which is evident in the prophecy which Jonah had made concerning Jeroboam II, and the Assyrian success against Aram and Israel after the time of Jeroboam, it is difficult to tell whether Isaiah is speaking prophetically, or if he is speaking as if the news were a current or recent event, where he announced in verse 7 that “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.”