In chapter 5, Isaiah is calling for a full repentance for God's people. There is no quick fix for them, no minor adjustments to be made. This has made him unpopular. Picture the scene: Israel has been preparing for war with Assyria (2 Kings 15:29). This means they need the support of the people. They need confidence and patriotism. Isaiah's words of judgment and calls for repentance sound not only like a spoil-sport. They sound like the words of a traitor. How can he tell Israel that they should focus their energies on repentance instead of on preparation for war? How can he tell them to prepare to come under Assyria's power?
According to George Adam Smith, Isaiah knew that God's honor stands alone. We can't manipulate him. We can't put him in our pocket. He doesn't owe us anything. "To the Jews the honor of their God was bound up with the inviolability of Jerusalem and the prosperity of Judah. But Isaiah knew Yahweh to be infinitely more concerned for the purity of His people than for their prosperity." (Smith, 35) Prosperity is not proof that God is with us. If we love prosperity more than God, God is not fooled.
The heart of this chapter is the wild grapes - what they are and what can be done about them. It opens with a story. God's people - Israel and Judah - had a vineyard. They planted a crop of grapes. But the fruit went bad. Wild grapes grew.
The wild grapes are catalogued in a series of Woes from verse 8 through 24. These are dire threats. "Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field." (v. 8) "Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks..." (v. 11) "Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes..." (v. 18) "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil..." (v. 20) "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight." (v. 21) "Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent." (v. 22-23)
What we have is a picture of two great threats: the love of wealth and the love of pleasure. Smith calls the love of wealth "the instinct to gather" and the love of pleasure "the instinct to squander". They loved wealth, abusing their land. They loved pleasure, over-indulging in alcohol.
Our life with God consists in praying, serving, obeying, and loving him. Life goes terribly awry when we replace these with other things. God's people had grown accustomed to gathering without regard for God. They had also grown accustomed to squandering without regard for God. What Smith claims alcohol was doing to them could also apply to their disregard for God as a whole: "Nothing kills the conscience like steady drinking to a little excess; and religion, even while the conscience is alive, acts on it only as an opiate."
These people are unreachable, as is depicted for us in the third Woe from verses 18 and 19 - "Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes, to those who say, "Let God hurry, let him hasten to his work so we may see it...." They call out for swift judgment - "hurry, God!" - not having the slightest inclination that they are pulling this judgment towards themselves the whole time with their deceitfulness.
These are the wild grapes. And there isn't anything that can be done, as long as they reject instruction. A foreign power will come and sweep them away. Isaiah has told his people of God's judgment and it would soon come.
During the 4th century A.D., the Roman emperor Constantine became Christian. Nearly overnight, the once persecuted faith became fashionable. And as soon as it became fashionable, people found it to be corrupt. There then grew a movement of people who followed Christ together in the deserts near Egypt. They became renowned for their spiritual maturity. One of these "desert fathers" wrote "This is the great task of man, that he should hold his sin before the face of God and count upon temptation until his last breath." (Sittser, 75) This is what God's people failed to do during the time of Isaiah. I think that the experience of reading Isaiah 5 can lead us to a renewed strength to expect temptation, to be ready for it, and to fight it well. We can do this through Christ, "who has been tempted in every way, just as we are" (Heb. 4:15). He is our strength for the fight to stay humble, so that our instincts to gather and squander do not choke the fruit of God's Spirit working within us.
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