Seder 87: Isaiah 5---The Parable of the Vineyard

 Isaiah 5:1-6 presents the story of a vineyard owner who carefully plants and tends a vineyard, only to have it produce bad fruit.  The owner finally decides not to waste any more time and effort on the vineyard and allows it to become overgrown.  

Isaiah gets to the point in verse 7,  Israel is God's vineyard, and it has not been producing good fruit.  

Isaiah goes on to describe the fruit that Israel and Judah have been yielding, giving five "woes".  Commentator John Oswalt summarizes them this way:

1.   Greed (vv 8-10), with the rich buying up houses and fields and pushing others off their land.  God had meant for plots of land to stay in families (Lv 25:23-28) to help people avoid poverty.  In a measure-for-measure judgment, those who engaged in these practices would lose their houses and go into exile.
2. Self-indulgence (vv 12-17)---people living for pleasure rather than rejoicing in God.  Feasting is a blessing (Isa 25:6; Rev 19:7-9), but not a proper life goal.  The self-indulgent would go hungry in exile. 
3. Cynicism (vv 18-19) of those who sin and dare God to do something about it, confusing grace for license.  
4.  Moral perversion (vv 20-21) of those who are so wise in their own eyes that they reject all moral authority.  
5. Social injustice (vv 22-24) practiced by those who exploit others for the sake of material gain. 

Isaiah declares that if Judah does not repent, God will use foreign powers---Assyria and Babylon---to punish the southern kingdom.