Yahweh is disappointed that His vineyard produces no good grapes. He wants wine, but doesn’t get any. The fruit he looks for is “justice and righteousness.” Hence: Justice is wine. Instead of the wine of justice, Yahweh finds blood. So comes Jesus: He sheds His blood in the city of blood, the cityof injustice that kills the prophets. He sheds His blood, which becomes wine, so that Jerusalem, the city of blood, might become a vineyard, a city of justice,... Read more

What do we pray when we pray that God’s name would be hallowed? As Luther pointed out, God’s name is indeed hallowed, but we pray that He would be hallowed among us. How does that happen? Isaiah 5:16 gives us a clue. Yahweh of hosts is the holy ( qadosh ) God who is hallowed ( qadash ) in righteousness. In context, righteousness refers to Yahweh’s exaltation to judge, His humbling of the proud, his judgment on the greedy and... Read more

Isaiah 5:12 contains the highest concentration of terms for musical instruments in the Old Testament outside a liturgical setting. Even Daniel 3 is liturgical: When the seven instruments sound, everyone is supposed to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s image. Elsewhere, lists of musical instruments are lists of temple instruments. At the temple, musical instruments, with singing, memorialized the works of Yahweh and the doings of His hands. The festivities that Isaiah describes in 5:12 form an anti-liturgy, the sounds of commemoration, wine... Read more

Isaiah warns the greedy and heavy drinkers that they are going to go into “exile” because of their ignorance (5:13). The land will be uncovered; its nakedness will be exposed (the verb galah means both “go into exile” and “uncover”). When they leave, they’re heading back out to the wilderness. Those who have been feasting and drinking from morning to night are going to lack food and drink (v. 13). As with Korah, Sheol is going to open wide and... Read more

Isaiah’s woe against the greedy uses liturgically charged terminology. “Woe to those who touch house to house” uses the verb naga’ , which is used some 28 times in Leviticus, far more than anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. “[Woe to those] who join field to field” uses the hiphil of qarav , with the meaning “cause to come near” or “bring near.” That verb is used over 90 times in Leviticus, over 50 in Numbers, and is the normal... Read more

Isaiah pronounces a woe against those who “add house to house and join field to field” (5:8). He imagines someone building house after house, walls or roof lines touching each other (the verb “add” actually means “touch”). He imagines someone buying the property next door, and then the property next door to that, and on and on. Isaiah’s concern, though, is not that the wealthy have “too much.” The focus is rather on the social effects of their greed. Because... Read more

The vineyard of Yahweh is the house of Israel, the men of Judah His plant. But when He finds only worthless grapes in the vineyard, he calls on the “inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judge” to judge between Himself and His vineyard (Isaiah 5:3). They will have to blame themselves. But Yahweh puts Himself in the dock, and subjects Himself to the judgment of the accused. Read more

Most translations say that the Beloved planted his vineyard on a “fertil hill,” but Isaiah wrote that He planted it on “a horn, a son of oil” (Heb. beqeren ben-shamen ). Phrase might refer to a fertile hill, but that’s not what the words mean. The passage closest to Isaiah’s usage is in Zechariah 4, where the two olive trees are called “sons of oil” (v. 14). In Zechariah, the phrase refers to Zerubbabel and Joshua, the two anointed ones... Read more