Isaiah 5: The Importance of the Vine

 

Isaiah 5

It’s not hard to find references to vineyards in the scripture. In I Kings Jezebel had a man killed over his vineyard so her husband, King Ahab could possess it. In Deuteronomy Moses reminds the owners of vineyards “not go over” their vines a second time but leave for the fatherless a portion. It is a perfect metaphor for God and His people, whether Israel or the ‘grafted in’ Christians after Christ’s resurrection. “I am the vine and you are the branches” (John 15:5). So it’s safe to say that grapes and wine and everything the vineyard represented was important to the people of Israel.

Isaiah begins verse 1 with a detailed description of cultivation “My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; so he expected to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.”

The first thing I notice is the effort put into making this a world class crop. He uses the “choicest vine” and puts a tower in it. Why put a tower in a vineyard? I had to look this one up because it seems odd phrase unless I just really don’t know anything about agriculture. If you think of vineyards as wealth then make efforts to guard them. One source I read says enemies might burn it to the ground in a dispute, slash and burn agriculture is a warfare tactic to starve your enemies. So the tower is a watchtower for protection. 

We guard what’s important.

But this vineyard produced “wild grapes”. So what gives? All this effort and expense and the produce grows wild?  This is a picture of the God’s people and their behavior. He provides them with land and vineyards, protects them with towers and hedges and they fail to produce. Or more accurately, they produce of their own imaginations. The seeds of rebellion were not placed within the crop originally so something has gone wrong. 

Next comes the appeal “What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it?” (verse 5)

The next few verses describe the destruction of the vine by its creator. Even though we realize this represents the Children of Israel who have lost their way, we still want to know how. How did it all go so terribly wrong? How did something designed to produce fruit become corrupted along the way? Isaiah never gives us a clear answer or a direct blame, but there are clues sprinkled throughout that suggest to me greed is to blame.

 This being the Old Testament there is the usual list of Woes. “Woe to those who join house to house; they add field to field, till there is no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land!” I think this means buying up excessive land, forcing people out of homes and squeezing every crop for profit—like um…a grape.

“Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may follow intoxicating drink; who continue until night, till wine inflames them!” (verse 11) these aren’t people who know how to have a good time, they live to party and they revel in excess. What is at the heart of the matter here? This is what is meant by “wild grapes”. Their purpose is to produce a specific type of grape, specified by the instructions contained in the seed’s code. But they reject their inherent creation and grow according to their own understanding, pleasing the senses.

It’s interesting to me that Isaiah mentions drunkenness a few times in this chapter, presenting a perfect picture of how vineyards get abused. But the drunkenness and anomie of his day are symptoms of greed. They don’t exist as often in a society wrecked by famine or those coming out of a long war. Party culture requires a wealthy base first, but it quickly goes off the rails if the core issues aren’t addressed.

In Isaiah’s day and probably ours as well, greed explains a lot of the excess living. Greed is trying to get more out of a thing than it’s able to produce. The result is uneven growth and wild behavior. But God who is gracious and unrelenting calls out to His people to change. He still uses prophets, but now we have the Holy Spirit. We receive our sustenance from the vine and nowhere else.