The Vineyard of Stinky Grapes – Isaiah 5:1-7

A text – Isaiah 5:1-7

5 I will sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
² He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded rotten grapes.

³ And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.
⁴ What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield rotten grapes?

⁵ And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
⁶ I will make it a wasteland; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

⁷ For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished garden; he expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!

A reflection:

Isaiah begins this speech of prophesy with two verses of a love song in a familiar pattern to his hearers, One they would have sung along with or even danced to. And then he turns it upside down and inside out. It is not a happy song but one of dashed expectations. All the labor that created the beautiful vineyard yielded nothing but wild grapes (the Hebrew word for rotten grapes translates as “stinky things”). The farmer would absolutely put no more time or effort into this soil and these plants. He would be happy to see it trampled by wild animals – a wasteland.

And then he lowers the boom on his audience: God is the farmer and they are the vineyard full of stinky grapes. The king and all the elite landowners who took up all the land, leaving nothing for the poor, are now neglecting the poor and making life liveable only for themselves. And the “cry” that God hears – this is the same Hebrew word for the cry that comes to God when Abel is killed, and the cry that comes to God from the children of Irael when they are slaves in Egypt. This cry is the cry of the oppressed, and God wants the ruling class to understand that he will not stand for it.

Jesus, as far as we can tell, grew up loving Isaiah. He quotes Isaiah often. He reads from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue. Isaiah’s style affects Jesus’s style when he teaches by parable. So our gospel lesson this week (about Jesus’s passion for the neglected ones while the church leaders place all their attention on other things), this message of Jesus certainly echoes this passage from Isaiah about God’s disappointment at people in power not paying attention to what God pays attention to.

I’ll bet Isaiah’s audience was not happy with him when they heard this prophesy. No more than we would be. Isaiah and Jesus ask us to do something new: Pay attention to what God wants. How might we start doing that this week?

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for your Word which can comfort us and also afflict us with discomfort. Help us to seek what you want for us and set aside things that will not bring about your kingdom of love and peace for all. Amen.