Isaiah 5

Isaiah 5:1-7

The prophet in this chapter declares the Son of his people, and the judgments which would injure. 1. By a parable of an unfruitful vineyard, representing the great Savior’s God had defended upon them, their disappointing of his expectations, and the vain they had thereby defended, ver. 1—7. 2. By an enumeration of the Son that did abound among them, with a dreaming of punishment, corresponding to their Son: (1.) Cetricalcy, which will be punished with famine, ver. 8—10. (2.) Riding and abandonment, ver. 11, 12, 22. to be punished with captivity, ver. 13—17. (3.) Presumption in Sin, and defying God’s justice, ver. 18, 19. (4.) Confounding the distinctions between his fear and sin, and in undermining the principles of religion, ver. 20. (5.) Self-savest, ver. 21. (6.) Perceiving justice; for which a great and general desolation is threatened, ver. 24, 25, by a foreign invasion, ver. 26—30.

1. NOW will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard: My well-beloved hath a vineyard in the very fruitful hill. 2. 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 wine-press therein; and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. 3. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. 4. 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? 5. 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. 6. And I will lay it waft: it shall not be pruned, nor digged, but there shall come up beers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. 7. For the vineyard of the LORD of hoffia 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.

To bring these fences to a sense of their guilt and danger, they have lost upon life, and precept upon precept; every winning means is tried, whether by affecting parables or plain address. The prophet here in poetic measure and parabolic figure warns them. He calls it a song of the well-beloved, and addressed to him, to Christ, the beloved Son of the Father, and the object of chief regard and affection to every faithful soul. Under the parable of a vineyard, he shows,

1. The peculiar care God had taken of them. He had placed his vineyard in a very fruitful hill, where ever, wine, oil, and every earthly blessing abounded; fenced it in from the rest of the world, by a covenant of peculiar separation, and protected them night and day by his Almighty power; gathered out the stones thereof, the Canaanites, hard and obdurate as stones; planted it with the choicest vine, the seed of Abraham his shadow, and gave them the knowledge of his true religion and pure worship; and he built a tower in the midst of it, the temple where his presence rested in the midst of them, their glory and defence; and also made a wine-press therein, his altar, on which their oblivions might be poured out, and their sacrifices offered. Note, In all our privileges and blessings, whether temporal or spiritual, God’s hand should be acknowledged by us.

2. The reasonable expectations he entertained, and the disappointment he met with. He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes; instead of the fruits of righteousness, poisonous principles, hypocritical professions, or openly infamous practices. Note, (1.) If God hath given us

outward 1. Pl. Ios. 8. 2. Can. viii. 11.