Isaiah 5

Isaiah was a professor of history and comparative literature in the palace of the kings of Judah. The book of Isaiah deals with history after the shock of the exile in 723 BCE. He is not preoccupied with the events of his own time and the conditions of his own time only. He spells out the wrongs in his own day but attempts to show to them that their actions are connected to the ultimate eschaton when God will deal with the wickedness of man. The chapter started with a sad poem since it is God the bridegroom singing about His bride in poetry of the highest class. The words are carefully selected. The bride is compared to a vineyard and it is the faithful remnant that the Lord has in mind here. It is a song for the Lord says “let me sing for my well-beloved” (v. 1). The remnant is as a beloved of the Lord that had a vineyard. God the Farmer explains how His well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill (v. 1c), The vineyard is the remnant’s space of spirituality. God the Farmer worked in this space of spirituality with the remnant “He dug it all around, removed the stones [sins] and planted it with the choisest vine” (v. 2a-b). The vine are believers who joined the remnant. “And He built a tower in the middle of it” which may be His abiding Spirit of presence (v. 2c). “And hewed out a wine vat in it” which may refer to the fruits of the Spirit that the Lord was expecting to see in this vineyard of belief (v. 2d). “He expected it to produce good grapes but it produced worthless ones” (v. 2e-f). He was looking forward to see the Galatians 5 fruits of the Spirit in it, but it produced only half-baked spirituality. He calls on the remnant in Isaiah’s day in Jerusalem and Judah, the remaining ones in Israel after the others went into exile, that they should judge between Him and His vineyard (v. 3b). God is calling for an investigative judgment. He needs a jury to judge between Him and His remnant. He calls for a court-scene and such a court scene was scheduled in prophecy to commence with Christ as Advocate on behalf of the remnant since 1844, using the year-day principle and apply it to the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 and then seeking the beginning of this period in Ezra 7 to be 457 BCE. The Advent awakening all over the world prior to 1843 thought it was the Second Coming of Christ but it was in effect only the start of the Investigative Judgment in Heaven. “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?” (v. 4a). God exceeds His limits with them. The answer is nothing. God is very thorough and repeatedly came back to work with them. “Why when I expected to produce grapes did it produce worthless ones?” (v. 4b). The expectation was checked during the Investigative Judgment. Those of the remnant weed that still did not produce any fruits of the Spirit and chose to persist in the desires of the flesh, fleshly sensitivity, fleshly perception, fleshly creativity, fleshly imaginations, fleshly products, they will be dealt with in the Executive Judgment after the millennium which follows the Second Coming. The Second Coming is rewarding the faithful remnant seed. The Executive Judgment is repaying the unfaithful remnant weed and all evil including Satan. “So let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard, I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed” (v. 5a-b). Fire will burn in Hell which is the Day of the Lord and an Executive Judgment. “I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. And I will lay it waste. It will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up, I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it” which is at the Second Coming that they will die for the glory of God will be too strong for them and this earth will be waste and empty and dry and Satan will be the only one sitting on it for a millennium licking wounds (v. 5c-6d). The identification of the vineyard follows: “For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of [spiritual] Israel and the [spiritual] men of [Isaiah’s] Judah, His delightful plant” (v. 7a-b). In the Investigative Judgment “He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress” (v. 7c-d). God does not have to wait for the Investigative Judgment to see the problems of the remnant. It is the unfallen worlds that needed the books to be opened since 1844 to see whether the remnant seed has any stigma preventing them from joining the heavenly citizenship. Jesus is their Advocate because He knows their salvation and the omniscient God protect each case then with authority, displaying His nail-driven marks of His hands. God does not need a courtcase to evaluate each person of the remnant’s eligibility for heaven, but the Bible says that He does call a court together and ask witnesses to be a jury. God does not need to act collateral but He choose to do so. Then Isaiah opened the panel of the listing of the sins of the remnant of his day. They “add house to house, join field to field ” so that there is no more room and the person lives alone in the middle of the field (v. 8a-c) an adding that was not legal but grabbed in landgrab actions. The punishment is that the houses will become empty without any occupants (v. 9). There will be no harvest for 10 acres of vineyard will yield one bath and a homer of seed will yield an ephah of grain (v. 10). They also “rise early in the morning” to drink alcohol and stay up late at night for the same (v. 11a-b). They have parties and buffets with music of the lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and with alcohol or wine (v. 2a). They rock-n’-roll around the clock. They do not pay attention to the deeds of the Lord nor do they consider the works of His hands (v. 2b-c). Their ability to discern spirituality and their sensitivity for the goodness of the Lord to them they cannot see. That is why the earthly exiles came upon them, says God through Isaiah “for their lack of knowledge” of salvation and God’s role in it (v. 13a). The honorable elite are defamed and the rest are left with thirst (v. 13b-c). These actions also has eschatological repercussions for “Sheol has enlarged its throat and opened its mouth without measure” meaning that in the Hell event after the millennium when evil will be eradicated the throat of eternal death is wide open (v. 14a). In the Executive Judgment or Hell, the “splendor” of Isaiah’s Jerusalem, “her multitude” or the remnant weed, her din, the jubilant within her [the unfaithful remnant] “descend” into Sheol or eternal death (v. 14b). Humanity will be humbled in that eschatological event after the millennium (v. 15). In the Executive Judgment “the Lord of Hosts [angels] will be exalted in judgment and the Holy God will show Himself Holy in righteousness” (v. 16). That is why the final eradication of all evil take place. The Lucifer rebellion in Heaven has made then a full circle with earthly history part of it. Isaiah touched upon this rebellion of Lucifer in chapter 14 and elsewhere. When the Hell event is over and evil eradicated and God Righteous when He acts to the whole Universe, then He creates a new earth and new heaven (Isaiah 65:17) “then the lambs will graze as in their pasture and strangers will eat in the waste places of the wealthy” because where the wealthy use to live, stranger believers will live on a newly created earth (v. 17). Isaiah warns the remnant of all generations “woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood and sin as if with cart ropes” (v. 18a-b). These sinful people display a veneer of religion by wishing for the speedy presence of God to change their discomfort situations, poor to make rich, pain to be healed, hungry to give food, no rain to give rain “Let Him make speed, let Him hasten His work that we may see” (v. 19). They push God in His schedules and plans, but they are sinful. Elsewhere the faithful say also “Come quickly Lord” and that is not wrong because they are faithful and wish to be separated from this earth of sin but these people want to stay in sin and wish for God to be a Deus ex machine Who rescues them in emergencies for selfish self-fulfillment reasons and gain. They call evil good and good evil (v. 20a); they substitute darkness for light and light for darkness (v. 20b); they substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (v. 20c). They are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight (v. 21a-b). They are heroes in drinking wine and valiant men in mixing strong drink (v. 22a-b). They justify the wicked for a bribe and take away the rights of the ones who are in the right (v. 23a-b). They defy the justice system because that is consensus and popular – ‘everyone does it’. With all truth systems turned upside down as a career and lifestyle, the eschaton awaits them. After the millennium there will be the Hell event “therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble and dry grass collapses into the flame, so their root will become like rot and their blossom blow away as dust” (v. 24a-c). The reason is that “they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts and despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel” (v. 24d-e). It is an issue of rejection of the Law of God and His commandments and a rejection of the Scriptures of God as guide for their lives that will bring upon them the anger of the Lord in the final Day of the Lord (v. 25a). “And He has stretched out His hand against them and struck them down, and the mountains quaked and their corpses lay like refuse in the middle of the streets” (v. 25c). However the anger of God is not spent but His hand is still stretched out (v. 25d-e). God is still a God of love and even in battle He is not fighting. The fate of the remnant weed is not the same as the remnant seed, those who are faithful. God will lift up a standard to the nations from afar (v. 26a). “And He will whistle to Him from the ends of the earth and behold He will come with speed swiftly” (v. 26b-c). Christ is the Standard that will be lifted up at the Second Coming and God the Father will whistle to Christ to come since only the Father knows the day and hour, Christ said. Christ will come with speed to resurrect and take the remnant seed to heavenly Jerusalem or heavenly Zion. In Him “no one in Him (bo) is weary or stumbles (v. 27a); not does He slumber and not does He sleep (v. 27b); the belt at Christ’s waist is not undone, meaning that Christ labors hard to get all the remnant seed into the heavenly Zion (v. 27c) and His sandal strap is not broken (v. 27d) a successful moving experience for Christ at Resurrection time. The arrows of Christ is sharp and all His bows are bent (v. 28a) and that is why Christ the King of Kings is so glorious at the Second Coming. Habakkuk 3 described the same scene. The hoofs of His horses seem like flint and its wheels like a whirlwind, which refers to the angels (v. 28b). There are roaring sounds (v. 29a); growling sounds (v. 29b); and He carries off with no one to deliver (v. 29c). When Christ takes the remnant seed from the claws of this hostile environment called earth, there is no one to remove them out of His hands. Christ shall growl over the evil one “in that day like the roaring of the sea” (v. 30a). “If one looks to the land, behold there is darkness, distress, even the light is darkened by its clouds” (v. 30b-c) but those with Christ will be in glorious light of the heavenly angels and Christ. The remnant weed is left behind but the remnant seed is taken up in the air to heavenly Zion to go to heaven.   

Dear God

When Christ will be lifted up He will draw all people unto Him and this experience we do not want to miss. Grant that we will be with the remnant seed, following Your law, bearing fruits of the Spirit and be found acceptable in Your sight. Amen.

Koot van Wyk, (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Kyungpook National University, Department of Liberal Education, Sangju, South Korea; conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia