Isaiah 5:1, commentary and pictures

The wellbeloved who owns the vineyard is Christ, and the vineyard planted in a very fruitful hill is Israel, His chosen church set in a fertile place with rich temporal and spiritual blessings and opportunities. He left nothing undone for its fruitfulness, hedging it about with His law, giving His oracles and servants to nurture it, setting His temple in its midst, and coming Himself to dig and prune and cherish it with unwearied mercy. He called and trained it to represent His character, extend His kingdom and bless all mankind, looking for the fruit of obedience, righteousness, love and self-sacrificing service. Instead it brought forth wild and degenerate fruit, as priests and teachers sought their own glory, withheld His due and turned the people from Christ, so judgment came in destruction of city and temple and the vineyard was taken from the unfaithful husbandmen and given to others bringing forth fruit. The song stands as warning to the church in every generation that great privileges require corresponding returns, while the Lord's vineyard is the world to be worked with pity and the truth planted in the heart alone keeps the vine bearing good fruit.

Identity of the Imagery

The wellbeloved who owns the vineyard is Christ, and the song is sung to Him concerning what He has done for His own planting. The vineyard is Israel, the Jewish church and house of Israel, God's chosen possession and church. It is very dear to the heart of God.

The vineyard set in a very fruitful hill means Israel was planted in a fertile place, transplanted into a genial soil prepared to make fruitfulness possible. The hill pictures the life and care bestowed upon the people, with the advantages, opportunities, and rich temporal and spiritual blessings God provided for them. That privileged planting carried glorious possibilities and expressed His purpose to bless and make fruitful.

The song of the wellbeloved touching His vineyard is to be sung by God's people with the heart and with the understanding as saints assemble to worship Him from year to year. The care invested in the vineyard is shown by its fence set about it, its stones gathered out, its planting with the choicest vine, and its tower built and winepress made within it. Fencing, clearing, choice planting, tower, and winepress together display the protection, best care, and abundant privileges given in preparation for fruit.

The great vine displayed at the entrance of the temple, a vine of gold with leaves and massive clusters of grapes, pictured Israel in the character of that prosperous vine. It represented the nation as planted and favored and made fruitful and beautiful in its fruitful place.

God's Care and Protection

The planting is the bringing of Israel as a vine out of Egypt, the casting out of the heathen before it, and the transplanting of it into the genial soil of Canaan, where it was set in place and hedged about with guardian care. To nurture that vine God gave Israel His oracles, divine commandments through Moses, and appointed leaders and ministers, and He sent His servants to tend it. The fence or hedge around the vineyard is God's law, especially the Ten Commandments, which distinguished Israel from other nations. That law protects those who obey from evil, guards human happiness, and preserves harmony between people and God. That protective law included the marriage and Sabbath laws, which were clearly established in Eden with the Sabbath blessed at creation.

The tower in the midst of the land was the temple, with God's glory dwelling above the mercy seat. God left nothing undone to make His church fruitful and an honor to its owner, providing everything needed for it to flourish. The care lavished on the vineyard shows abundant provision in order to receive fruit from His people, for the vineyard represents the Jewish church as a precious possession cared for by the Beloved.

With yearning hope for fruitfulness, Christ came in person to His vineyard to plead with impenitent Israel and save it from destruction, digging about the vine and pruning and cherishing it with unwearied efforts. That coming to seek fruit was His three years going in and out among the people, knocking at the gate in steadfast ministry of love. His digging and pruning and cherishing were healing the sick, comforting the sorrowing, raising the dead, speaking pardon and peace to the repentant, and gathering the weak and weary and helpless and desponding. He extended mercy to all without respect to age or character, even while indifference and contempt beat back His mercy.

Purpose and Expected Fruit

Israel was called, chosen and trained and set in a fertile place with abundant privileges and glorious possibilities in order to bear fruit, to represent God in the world, to display His kingdom's principles and His character in a fallen world, to restore His moral image in humanity, and to bring blessing to all mankind. Through holy and compassionate lives and through obedient life and worship, Israel's light was to reveal Him and His character and kingdom to other nations, so that His kingdom would extend throughout the earth. That prosperity and growth of the vineyard were conditional on obedience to God's law.

The fruit Christ looks for and desires from His vineyard, and from saints assembling to worship Him, is obedience to God's commandments, and that obedience makes souls precious in His sight. That fruit is righteous character and fruits of righteousness, including love, humility and self-sacrificing service. Applied to Christians, it means Christianity should produce fruit unto righteousness and distinguish believers from the world, rather than being a strange or fruitless and degenerate vine turned toward human supports.

The husbandmen entrusted with the vineyard are responsible and accountable for returning its fruit to God to His glory. Religious teachers who lead people away from God's commandments withhold the fruits He seeks, and the protection He gave represents those commandments which the unfaithful failed to honor.

Unfaithfulness and Judgment

Though every care had been given with yearning hope for fruitfulness, the vineyard looked for to bear good grapes brought forth only wild fruit, a degenerate growth turned aside from its purpose toward human supports. The people forgot God and rebelled, abusing their privileges, resisting grace, rejecting the warnings of the prophets sent to them, and turning religion into hollow formalism. Their resistance and persecution of the messengers spoiled the vineyard and brought the nation toward judgment, yet love continued to follow them, warning voices were still sent, and the sacrificial system kept ever before them the one great Sacrifice it prefigured.

The priests and teachers placed in charge proved unfaithful, for instead of teaching the goodness of God and His claim upon love and service they sought their own glory and the fruit of the vineyard for themselves. They misled the people, withheld from God the service He claimed, and turned the nation away from Christ, rejecting His authority and warnings and thereby becoming responsible for the nation's sin and ruin. By that greed and misuse of trust they misrepresented the character of God and gave the Gentiles cause to misunderstand His kingdom.

The parable of the householder who planted a vineyard and let it out to husbandmen replays this song, faithfully illustrating the past and future history and true religious character of the Jews. The beating, killing and stoning of the servants and the murder of the son show the rejection of God's messengers and of Christ the heir. By their own answer they stand condemned, for the just sentence is that the Lord of the vineyard will miserably destroy the wicked husbandmen, take the kingdom of God and national privileges from them and give the vineyard to others who will bring forth its fruit, ending in destruction of temple and city and dispersion of the nation.

Israel had received great light, blessings and prosperity but proved unfaithful and did not render the fruits sought, and that unfaithfulness brought desolation. Such failure to fulfill expectation brings disappointment to God despite all the good things He has given. The later trampling of the vineyard is judgment upon Jerusalem, for though all that could be done had been done, mercy and light were rejected; and grief over Jerusalem reveals long patience and sorrow over such unfaithfulness. The divine Husbandman had planted a goodly vine upon the hills of Palestine, but the men of Israel despised it, cast it over the vineyard wall, bruised it and trampled it underfoot hoping to destroy it forever. Then the Husbandman removed the vine and concealed it from sight, planting it again on the other side of the wall so that the stock was no longer visible and beyond the power of men to reach or harm, while the branches hung over the wall that grafts might still be joined to it. The desolate wilderness reflects the ruined condition of the vineyard and the degradation of Israel, yet above that ruin shines the promised glory of the Messiah's reign, with covenant mercy spanning the clouds of wrath like a rainbow.

Warning and Call Today

The vineyard song is not confined to ancient Israel but speaks to the church in every generation, for great privileges and blessings have been given to the church and corresponding returns to His glory are expected. It lays bare the sinful breach of trust of the once-chosen people and stands as a lesson and warning that unless people walk in the Lord's ways keeping all His commandments He cannot bless and sustain them. God's song about His vineyard is His church on earth today, making plain His love for the lost race and His eternal plan for their salvation as seen in Israel's call, successes and failures, restoration to favor, and rejection of the Master of the vineyard.

The keepers of the vineyard are God's church, and those now occupying it as faithful husbandmen are the goodly remnant by whom the plan of the ages is carried out and to whom all the covenant promises will be fulfilled. The Lord will not serve with the sins of His people but suffers calamity and defeat to come upon them when they glorify themselves and weave false principles into their practice. He willingly forgives those who repent, but He will remove His favor from those who keep sinning, exalt self and mingle the sacred with the common, and terrible judgments will destroy those who misrepresent Him while claiming His temple as security though their example misleads.

The fruitful hill that once bore grapes and now yields wild grapes pictures apostasy, where the grapes are believers' past faithful life and the wild grapes are their present departure into a bitter, evil course. That change of the same vine from sweet to bitter brings weariness, sorrow of heart and grief beyond words. The end is near when truth alone will triumph, and only the truth as it is in Jesus, planted in the heart by the Holy Spirit and daily tended by the grace of God, keeps the vine bearing good fruit.

The Lord's vineyard is the world, which He regards with pity and compassion and which is all to be worked, for He is not partial to any part of it. Those who have received the light of truth must share it with those without the same advantages rather than rejecting or condemning them for ignorance, laboring in every part to elevate the standard of truth and establish memorials that make a proper impression, for God judges the tree by the character of the fruit borne. The Southern field is part of that vineyard and has been neglected, with the work there barely begun despite long-standing duty, and the Lord is Master of the vineyard to whom its needs and difficulties should be brought.

God intended His people to take possession of the land and spread through it in faith rather than crowding into Jerusalem or concentrating people and resources in one place, which leaves other parts uncultivated and robs them. Such spreading extends the work and brings more ground under cultivation, and their future history would have been different had they occupied the vineyard according to His plan. The vineyard is still waiting for workers, so God's people should keep their means available to support missionary work in places ready for harvest.