Isaiah 5

Isaiah 5
The Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved of the biblical scrolls found at Qumran from the second century BC, contains all the verses in this chapter.
Book Book of Isaiah
Bible part Old Testament
Order in the Bible part 23
Category Nevi'im

Isaiah 5 is the fifth chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains the prophecies spoken by the prophet Isaiah, and is a part of the Book of the Prophets.[1][2]

Text

Textual versions

Some most ancient manuscripts containing this chapter in Hebrew language:

Ancient translations in Koine Greek:

Structure

The New King James Version organises this chapter as follows:

Parable of the vineyard

Now let me sing to my Well-beloved
A song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard:
My Well-beloved has a vineyard
On a very fruitful hill.[5]

In relation to the "Parable of the Vineyard", the New Oxford Annotated Bible identifies the vineyard in Isaiah 5:7 as "Israel" (compare to Isaiah 1:8; Isaiah 3:14; Isaiah 27:2-6).[6]

He dug it up and cleared out its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.

The "choicest vine" is an allusion of the people of Israel (Psalm 80:8-16; Jeremiah 2:21; Hosea 10:1).[6]

He built a tower in its midst,
And also made a winepress in it;
So He expected it to bring forth good grapes,
But it brought forth wild grapes.[7]

The failing grapes are described as "wild" in the King James Version and the English Standard Version, "rotten" in the New American Bible (Revised Edition) and "sour" in the Good News Translation.[8] In Brenton's Septuagint Translation, the vineyard "brought forth thorns".[9]

The six woes

Verses 8 to 24 contain "the six woes".[10] Anglican theologian Edward Plumptre suggests that the form of the woes preached by Jesus in Luke 6:24-26 is based on this passage.[11] After the general warning conveyed to Israel by the parable of the vineyard, "six sins are particularised as those which have especially provoked God to give the warning".[10]

The six woes of Isaiah relate to those responsible for:

  • Amalgamation of land (verses 8-10)
  • Drunkenness and revelry (verses 11-17)
  • Compound sinfulness, or "sin with a cart rope" (verses 18-19)
  • Use of language to justify evil (verse 20)
  • Self-conceit (verse 21)
  • Corruption (verses 22-23) associated with intoxication, cf. Proverbs 31:3:
It is not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer.

Verse 8

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! [12]

The law of Israel provided "very stringently and carefully, that as far as possible there should be an equal distribution of the soil, and that hereditary family property should be inalienable. All landed property that had been alienated reverted to the family every fiftieth year, or year of jubilee; so that alienation simply had reference to the usufruct of the land till that time."[13]

Micah 2:2 and the Jerusalem Bible's translation of Job 22:8 make similar points:

You have narrowed the lands of the poor down to nothing.[14]

Verse 20

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil

"This fourth woe relates to those who adopted a code of morals that completely overturned the first principles of ethics, and was utterly opposed to the law of God."[13]

Verse 21

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!

See also Proverbs 3:7:

Do not be wise in your own eyes

Verse 25

For all this His anger is not turned away,
But His hand is stretched out still.[15]

This is the first occurrence of a refrain which appears again in Isaiah 9:12, 9:17, 9:21 and 10:4. According to the Pulpit Commentary, "the words imply that God's judgment upon Judah will not be a single stroke, but a continuous smiting, covering some considerable space of time".[10]

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ J. D. Davis. 1960. A Dictionary of the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House.
  2. ↑ Theodore Hiebert, et al. 1996. The New Interpreter's Bible: Volume VI. Nashville: Abingdon.
  3. ↑ Timothy A. J. Jull; Douglas J. Donahue; Magen Broshi; Emanuel Tov (1995). "Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert". Radiocarbon. 37 (1): 14. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  4. ↑ Ulrich 2010, p. 338-340.
  5. ↑ Isaiah 5:1
  6. 1 2 The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Augmented Third Edition, New Revised Standard Version, Indexed. Michael D. Coogan, Marc Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, Editors. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2007. pp. 984-986 Hebrew Bible. ISBN 978-0195288810
  7. ↑ Isaiah 5:2
  8. ↑ BibleGateway.com, Isaiah 5:2
  9. ↑ Brenton's Septuagint Translation: Isaiah 5:2
  10. 1 2 3 Pulpit Commentary on Isaiah 5, accessed 8 March 2018
  11. ↑ Plumptre, E., Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers on Isaiah 5, accessed 8 March 2018
  12. ↑ Isaiah 5:8
  13. 1 2 Keil and Delitzsch, Keil and Delitzsch OT Commentary on Isaiah 5, accessed 10 March 2018
  14. ↑ Jerusalem Bible, Job 22:8, note stating "correction, following Greek"
  15. ↑ Isaiah 5:25

Bibliography

  • Ulrich, Eugene, ed. (2010). The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants. Brill.

Jewish

Christian

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