Isaiah 5

Isaiah opens with a love song about a vineyard that gives only sour grapes, then reveals that the vineyard is Judah. Six woes follow, naming greed, drunkenness, mockery of God, twisted morals, pride and corrupt courts. The chapter ends with God summoning a fierce foreign army to bring judgment.

Isaiah 5:1

Isaiah begins like a singer at a feast, performing a love song for his friend. The friend turns out to be God, and the vineyard sits on a rich hillside. Everything is set up for the best possible harvest. The gentle opening lets the listener’s guard down.

BSA: beloved (“loved one, dear friend”): The song begins with affection, which makes the coming disappointment more painful.

See also: Psalm 80:8-9.

Isaiah 5:2

The owner does everything right: he digs, clears stones, plants choice vines, builds a tower for guarding and a winepress ready for the harvest. Then he waits, and the grapes are sour. The care shows God’s generous investment in His people.

BSA: sour (“wild, worthless”): The grapes were not merely poor; they were wild and useless, nothing like what the good vines should have produced.

Hebrew: בְּאֻשִׁים (be’ushim, H891) — “stinking, foul things.” The Hebrew word suggests rotten, foul-smelling fruit, not just tart grapes. The disappointment is strong.

Isaiah 5:3-4

Now the owner speaks and asks Jerusalem to be the judge. What more could He have done? The question has no good answer. The fault lies not with the gardener but with the vineyard. God invites His people to see their own case honestly.

BSA: judge (“vindicate, govern”): The people are asked to pass a verdict, and they will end up condemning themselves.

Isaiah 5:5-6

The owner announces what he will do. He will remove the hedge and wall, so animals will trample the vineyard, and it will become a tangle of thorns with no rain. God’s protection withdrawn is the judgment. The clouds are His to command, so the one who gave blessing can withhold it.

BSA: wasteland (“desolate, barren”): The once-tended garden becomes a ruin because no one cares for it.

See also: Isaiah 32:13.

Isaiah 5:7

The riddle is solved: the vineyard is Israel and Judah. God wanted fairness and right living and found violence and the cries of the oppressed. The wordplay in Hebrew is sharp: He looked for mishpat (justice) and saw mispach (bloodshed). Jesus later told a similar story of a vineyard.

BSA: justice (“upright judgment, righteousness”): God expected fair dealing in society, not only worship. bloodshed (“violence, oppression”): The harvest was violence against the weak instead of fair dealing.

Hebrew: מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, H4941) — “justice.” Isaiah sets it beside a similar-sounding word for bloodshed, so the ear catches how near justice lay to violence.

See also: Matthew 21:33-41.

Isaiah 5:8

The first woe is on the greedy who buy up house after house and field after field until the poor have no land. Each family’s portion in Israel was given by God, so this land-grabbing robs both neighbor and Giver. The rich end up isolated and alone.

BSA: Woe (“a cry of sorrow, a lamentation”): It is a funeral cry, mourning the doom of those who still seem to prosper.

See also: Micah 2:2.

Isaiah 5:9-10

God declares that the fine houses will stand empty and the land will fail. Ten acres of vines will give only about six gallons, and a large measure of seed only a tenth of that in grain. Wealth gained by grabbing becomes poverty.

BSA: desolate (“a state of horror or ruin, waste”): The empty mansions will cause shock, not envy.

Isaiah 5:11-12

The second woe is on those who live for drink and parties from dawn to night. Their feasts are full of music, yet they never stop to notice what God is doing. Pleasure is not the sin so much as pleasure that crowds God out.

BSA: disregard (“pay no attention to, ignore”): They do not oppose God. They simply never give Him a thought.

See also: Amos 6:4-6.

Isaiah 5:13

Because they lack understanding, the people will go into exile. The same leaders who feasted will go hungry, and the crowds who drank will be parched. The punishment mirrors the sin. They would not know God, so they lose everything else.

BSA: exile (“be taken captive, led away”): This looks ahead to the captivity that later fell on Judah.

Isaiah 5:14

Death is pictured as a monster with a wide throat, swallowing the proud and the partying crowds of Jerusalem. Sheol is the realm of the dead. The festive noise of the city ends in silence.

BSA: Sheol (“the underworld, place of no return”): It is the grave seen as a hungry power that takes all, however great.

Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל (she’ol, H7585) — “the realm of the dead.” It is pictured as having an appetite, never satisfied, opening wider to take the whole crowd.

Isaiah 5:15-16

Everyone proud is brought low, and eyes that looked down on others are lowered in shame. Through this, God is shown as truly God. His justice displays His holiness. Holiness here is not cold distance but a righteousness that acts.

BSA: holy (“set apart, sacred”): God is utterly distinct from His people’s corruption.

See also: Isaiah 2:11-12.

Isaiah 5:17

After the judgment, the rich men’s lands will become open pasture. Sheep graze among the ruins and wanderers feed where the wealthy once lived. What people seized is left to the passing flock.

BSA: wealthy (“fat ones, rich”): The word hints at those grown fat on gain, whose ruined estates now feed strangers.

Isaiah 5:18-19

The third and fourth woes are on those who drag sin along as if hitched to it, and on those who mock God by saying, let Him hurry up. They do not believe judgment will come. Their scoffing treats God’s patience as proof He is absent.

BSA: deceit (“vanity, falsehood”): Sin is pulled along by ropes of lies that people tell themselves.

See also: 2 Peter 3:3-4.

Isaiah 5:20

The fifth woe is on those who turn morality upside down, calling evil good and good evil. When the labels are changed, conscience stops working. Light, darkness, bitter and sweet all swap places.

BSA: evil (“moral wickedness, bad”): Wrongdoing is given a respectable name. darkness (“absence of light, spiritual ignorance”): Calling it light does not change what it is.

See also: Romans 1:32.

Isaiah 5:21

The sixth woe is on those who trust their own cleverness. To be wise in your own eyes is to need no teaching and no correction, including from God. It is a quiet pride that shuts the door to truth.

BSA: wise (“intelligent, skilled, prudent”): They claim real insight, but the source is only themselves.

See also: Proverbs 3:7.

Isaiah 5:22-23

These woes address leaders who are champions at drinking but fail as judges. They take bribes, clear the guilty, and deny justice to the innocent. Those entrusted with fairness sell it, so the weak have nowhere to turn.

BSA: bribe (“a gift to influence, a reward”): Justice is for sale, so the one who pays wins.

See also: Exodus 23:8.

Isaiah 5:24

As fire eats dry straw, the people will perish from root to blossom, with nothing left to grow again. The cause is stated: they rejected God’s instruction and despised His word. All the other sins grew from that.

BSA: rejected (“spurned, cast away”): They did not merely forget God’s teaching; they threw it aside.

See also: Isaiah 40:7-8.

Isaiah 5:25

God’s anger burns against His own people. His raised hand strikes, the land shakes, and the dead lie in the streets. The refrain, His hand is still upraised, means the warnings have not yet exhausted His judgment.

BSA: hand (“an open hand; strength, a side or share”): The hand stands for God’s power, outstretched here in judgment.

See also: Isaiah 9:12.

Isaiah 5:26

God raises a signal flag and whistles, and a distant nation answers. Though He acts through a foreign power, it is His summons that sets it moving. The enemy comes with astonishing speed.

BSA: banner (“ensign, signal”): A flag raised on a hill gathers an army, and here God Himself raises it.

See also: Isaiah 7:18.

Isaiah 5:27-28

The army is described as tireless and fully ready: no one stumbles or sleeps, belts are tight, sandals are sound, arrows are sharp, bows are strung. The horses’ hooves are hard as flint and the chariots rush like a storm. Nothing is slowing them down.

BSA: whirlwind (“a hurricane, storm”): The chariots raise a storm of dust and force as they come.

Isaiah 5:29-30

The invaders roar like lions that seize prey and carry it where no one can rescue it. The sound is like the roaring sea. Looking over the land, one sees only darkness and trouble, and even the light is hidden. The song of the vineyard ends in gloom.

BSA: deliverance (“rescue, safety, to be set free”): Once seized, there is no one left to save them.

See also: Isaiah 8:21-22.