The Vineyard Song Becomes an Indictment

“Wellbeloved” is yedid and “beloved” is dod, the vocabulary of the Song of Solomon; the prophet begins like a friend of the bridegroom singing a love song. “A very fruitful hill” is literally “a horn, son of oil”, a spur of hill with rich soil.

“Fenced” is a verb found only here, probably to dig or hoe. “The choicest vine” is sorek, a red grape named from the valley of Sorek where Delilah lived (Judges 16:4); Jeremiah 2:21 uses it: “I had planted thee a noble vine.” “Wild grapes” is be’ushim, from ba’ash, to stink: rotten berries.

The singer suddenly speaks as the owner, “betwixt me and my vineyard”. It is the trap Nathan set for David in 2 Samuel 12: tell a case, let the hearer pronounce judgment, and only then say who the case is about.

“Looked” is qavah, to wait in hope, the verb of Isaiah 40:31, “they that wait upon the LORD”. It comes twice here and twice again in verse 7. The question “what could have been done more?” has no answer, which is the point of asking it.

“Eaten up” is the grazing verb ba’ar again, and “trodden down” is mirmas, a place for trampling. Psalm 80:12–13 laments the same fate for Israel as God’s vine: “Why hast thou then broken down her hedges... The boar out of the wood doth waste it.”

“Briers and thorns”, shamir vashayit, is a pair found only in Isaiah, and it comes back three times in 7:23–25. Then the mask slips: no farmer can “command the clouds that they rain no rain”. Before verse 7 names the owner, the owner has given himself away.

“Pleasant plant” is literally “the planting of his delights”, from sha’ashu’im, the word Wisdom uses in Proverbs 8:30, “I was daily his delight.” Isaiah returns to the image in 27:2–6 with a second vineyard song, one the LORD keeps and waters every moment.

Micah, Isaiah’s contemporary, makes the same charge: “they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away” (Micah 2:2). The law held that land could not be sold for ever, “for the land is mine” (Leviticus 25:23). Naboth died for refusing to sell his vineyard (1 Kings 21).

The Hebrew has no “said”: “In my ears, the LORD of hosts.” It is a compressed oath, and “of a truth” is the oath formula “surely”. Isaiah uses the same phrasing in 22:14: “it was revealed in mine ears by the LORD of hosts.”

“Ten acres” is literally ten yokes, the land ten teams of oxen could plough in a day; a bath was a single jar’s measure, perhaps twenty-two litres. A homer, the load a donkey carried, was ten ephahs (Ezekiel 45:11). So the harvest returns a tenth of the seed sown.

“Strong drink” is shekhar, beer or other fermented drink not made from grapes. “Inflame” is to set on fire: they drink from dawn until the wine heats them at night. Isaiah names a working day and fills it with nothing but drinking.

Four instruments: the kinnor, David’s lyre; the nevel, a larger harp; the tof, the hand drum Miriam played at the sea (Exodus 15:20); and the chalil, the pipe played at Solomon’s coronation (1 Kings 1:40). “The operation of his hands” is set against idols, “the work of their own hands” (2:8).

“Are gone into captivity” is a past tense for a future event, the prophet speaking of it as already done. Hosea 4:6 says the same: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” The Greek read the vowels differently and has the nobles “dead of hunger” rather than “famished”.

“Hell” is she’ol, the grave pictured as a gaping throat. Proverbs 30:15–16 lists the grave first among things that never say “It is enough”, and Habakkuk 2:5 compares greed to Sheol, which “cannot be satisfied”. The pronouns are feminine: Jerusalem’s glory and noise go down into it.

The refrain of chapter 2 surfaces in the middle of the woes: the pair from 2:9, the mean man and the mighty man, and the lofty eyes of 2:11. The drinkers of verse 11 are placed under the same levelling as the proud of chapter 2.

Judgment and righteousness are the pair God looked for from his vineyard in verse 7 and did not find; now he shows them himself. “Shall be sanctified” recalls Leviticus 10:3, spoken after fire consumed Nadab and Abihu: “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me.”

“After their manner” means as in their own pasture. “The fat ones” are the rich, the men who joined field to field in verse 8. Their estates, emptied of people, become grazing for lambs and wanderers. The land they gathered ends with no owner at all.

A cart rope is the heavy line by which a draught animal hauls a wagon. The people are harnessed to their sin like oxen and pulling it along behind them. “Vanity” is shav, emptiness or falsehood, the “vain” of the vain oblations in 1:13.

“Make speed, and hasten” are mahar and chush, the two verbs Isaiah will build into his second son’s name, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, “hasten the spoil, hurry the prey” (8:1–3). The scoffers use Isaiah’s own title, “the Holy One of Israel”, as a taunt.

Three pairs, each reversed both ways: evil and good, darkness and light, bitter and sweet. Amos 5:7 makes the same charge against Israel’s courts: “Ye who turn judgment to wormwood.” The verse moves from ethics to perception to taste, as if the corruption reaches the senses.

Proverbs 3:7 gives the command this woe presumes broken: “Be not wise in thine own eyes.” Proverbs 26:12 goes further: “there is more hope of a fool than of him.” Isaiah 29:14 promises that “the wisdom of their wise men shall perish”.

“Mighty” is gibborim, the title of David’s warriors, and “men of strength” is anshe chayil, men of valour, a military phrase. “Mingle” means mixing wine with spices to strengthen it, the “mixed wine” of Proverbs 23:30. Their only campaign is at the table.

Exodus 23:7–8 sets the two commands side by side: “I will not justify the wicked”, and “thou shalt take no gift”. “Justify” means to declare innocent in court. The drinkers of verse 22 are the same men who sit on the bench.

The Hebrew reads “as the tongue of fire devoureth the stubble”, the phrase later used at Pentecost (Acts 2:3). Root and blossom are the whole plant, as Malachi 4:1 threatens to leave “neither root nor branch”. Torah and word are paired, both “cast away”.

“The hills did tremble” may recall the great earthquake of Uzziah’s reign, which Amos dates his book by (Amos 1:1) and Zechariah 14:5 still remembers centuries later. “Torn in the midst of the streets” is literally lying like refuse in the streets.

An “ensign” is nes, a signal pole raised on a bare height. “Hiss” is sharaq, to whistle, as a beekeeper whistles bees out of the hive; Isaiah 7:18 uses it of the LORD whistling for the fly of Egypt and the bee of Assyria. The nation is not yet named.

Soldiers girded up their long garments at the waist to march and fight. The “latchet” is the thong of a sandal, the least valuable thing Abram would take from the king of Sodom (Genesis 14:23). Assyrian reliefs show their infantry in laced boots.

Before horseshoes, a cavalry horse was only as good as its hooves, and these are hard as flint. “Whirlwind” is sufah, the storm wind. Assyria’s chariot corps was the terror of the age, and Isaiah describes it without naming it.

“Roar” is naham, the low growl a lion makes over prey already caught. Amos 3:4 asks, “Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey?” The picture moves from the chase to the growl over the carcass, the moment when nothing can be taken back.

“Roaring of the sea” uses the same growl word as verse 29, so the lion’s snarl swells into the noise of the ocean. “Heavens thereof” is a rare word probably meaning clouds. Isaiah 8:22 returns to this scene: “trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish.”