2 In that day,
“ A pleasant vineyard,1 sing of it!
3 I, the Lord, am its keeper;
every moment I water it.
Lest anyone punish it,
I keep it night and day;
4 I have no wrath.
Would that I had thorns and briers to battle!
I would march against them,
I would burn them up together.
5 Or let them lay hold of my protection,
let them make peace with me,
let them make peace with me.”
6 In days to come2 Jacob shall take root,
Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots
and fill the whole world with fruit.
7 Has he struck them as he struck those who struck them?
Or have they been slain as their slayers were slain?
8 Measure by measure,3 by exile you contended with them;
he removed them with his fierce breath4 in the day of the east wind.
9 Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be atoned for,
and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:5
when he makes all the stones of the altars
like chalkstones crushed to pieces,
no Asherim or incense altars will remain standing.
10 For the fortified city is solitary,
a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness;
there the calf grazes;
there it lies down and strips its branches.
11 When its boughs are dry, they are broken;
women come and make a fire of them.
For this is a people without discernment;
therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them;
he who formed them will show them no favor.
12 In that day from the river Euphrates6 to the Brook of Egypt the Lord will thresh out the grain, and you will be gleaned one by one, O people of Israel. 13 And in that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
Section Overview: The Overflowing Vineyard
Yet another song brings the long section of chapters 13–27, and more particularly chapters 24–27, to a close. Yet the song also displays many links to the earlier part of the book, not least in its depiction of the gathering of the nations to Zion, echoing 2:2–5. Elsewhere Isaiah often draws a contrast between two cities (Babylon and Jerusalem); here, as in chapter 5, he offers a tale of two vineyards. Chapter 27 echoes and completes the vineyard song of chapter 5.
The chapter begins with a song sung by Yahweh himself, as the vineyard he has planted and lovingly tended reaches its maturity and its blessings overflow to the whole world. He guards it jealously and allows enemies no access. This vineyard has been completed via painful and costly disciplines that have purged it of idolatry. In contrast to the world city, which now lies desolate, the Lord’s vineyard is flourishing. This culminates in the great harvest of the last day, in which warring nations (cf. 2:4) are reconciled and united in the worship of Yahweh on the holy mountain.
Section Outline
II.C. The Third Series (24:1–27:13) . . .
4. The Overflowing Vineyard (27:2–13)
a. The Fruitful Vine (27:2–6)
b. The Purifying and Pruning (27:7–11)
c. The Worldwide Harvest (27:12–13)
Response
The oracles against the nations have often made for tough and difficult reading, reflecting the nature of living in a fallen and sinful world and battling the powers of darkness. But the end of the story is praise and worship in the new creation. Isaiah continues to balance these ideas, as we will see in the next section.
Three things can be said. First, the new creation, just like the old, is entirely the Lord’s work. He has patiently watched over his vineyard, transforming the sour grapes of chapter 5 into an abundant and fruitful harvest. He has protected it from enemies and refreshed and cherished it, preparing it for the day in which it will fill the whole earth.
Second, judgment is a necessary part of this process, including the judgment of his people, which is to refine and not destroy. There must be an abandoning of the seductions of idolatry and an atoning for guilt. This is judgment now, to avoid judgment then. But we have also seen punishment of Israel’s enemies, which has been altogether more severe. God does not tolerate attempts to destroy his people; we may think of Sennacherib, Haman, and Herod as examples of this.
But, third, the offer of grace is worldwide: former enemies become part of the redeemed community if they accept the offer of grace. This is strikingly illustrated in the mention of Egypt, the ancient enemy, and Assyria, the contemporary one. Indeed, this has been the whole thrust of this section: God’s love is worldwide, and all who come to him in repentance and faith will find salvation. The words of Psalm 86:9–10 fittingly sum up this chapter and section:
All the nations you have made shall come
and worship before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
For you are great and do wondrous things;
you alone are God.Isaiah 27:2–13
Isaiah regularly moves between Jerusalem and the wider world; this next section focuses more on the local scene, including at first the northern kingdom. The material here is more like chapters 1–12. There is general scholarly agreement that this next section (chs. 28–39) comes from the period starting just before the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, stretching to Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah in 701 BC. The text offers severe warnings about alliances with Egypt; some commentators blame Hezekiah’s folly in refusing to serve Sennacherib and seeking Egyptian help to fend him off. Certainly, negotiations with Egypt would not have occurred without at least Hezekiah’s tacit approval, but that view of affairs is too simplistic.
Isaiah is forthright in condemning worldly alliances, as with Ahaz and Tiglath-pileser in chapter 7 and Hezekiah and his ill-fated dalliance with Merodach-baladan in chapter 39. However, in the chapters condemning the alliance with Egypt, it is the leaders of Judah who are addressed rather than the king. Far from reading the text as describing Hezekiah’s “lunatic fascination with militarist solutions,”62 it is preferable to see him as a man of faith seeking to trust Yahweh in perilous times.
Second Kings 18:7 describes Hezekiah’s rebellion against the king of Assyria as one of the positive signs of his David-like kingship, along with removing the high places and keeping the Lord’s commandments. That verse reads “The Lord was with him,” making it difficult to accept Webb’s statement that Hezekiah’s rebellion was a “foolhardy move.”63 In any case, as we shall see in Isaiah 33, Sennacherib would likely have made some excuse to invade Judah.
The section emphasizes faith and obedience, recalling the prophet’s words to Ahaz in 7:9. Trust in the invisible Lord in the face of all-too-visible enemies is at the heart of these chapters. We can further subdivide the material into three movements. Chapters 28–33 in particular develop this theme of trusting the Lord’s promises and obeying his commands over against the allure of worldly alliances. These two ways culminate in chapters 34 and 35, which show human pride’s ending in a desert and the way of faith’s ending in a garden—another glorious passage describing the new creation. This leads to the third part (chs. 36–39), in which faith is tested by the hard realities of history.
The first segment (chs. 28–35), offers six oracles beginning with hoy (28:1; 29:1, 15; 30:1; 31:1; 33:1). This word is sometimes translated “woe” and can also imply strong emotion expressed by a word such as “Ah!” The term contains the nuance of judgment, lament, and sometimes invitation (as in 55:1). The underlying idea is of summoning a person to a bar of judgment. Isaiah began his book with a summons to a courtroom, with the whole universe as witness, while in 41:21–24 Yahweh summons the gods of the nations to make their case (if they have one).Isaiah 28–39
Isaiah 28