BOOK 23 OF 66 · MAJOR PROPHETS · KING JAMES BIBLE

Isaiah 5

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Isaiah 5 Overview

Isaiah sings of the LORD’s carefully tended vineyard that produced wild grapes, then pronounces six woes on Judah’s greed, drunkenness, moral reversal, pride, corruption, and rejection of God’s word.

IsaiahBook

5Chapter

30Verses

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Before you read Isaiah 5

Coming from

After judgment, Isaiah briefly pictures a purified and protected Zion: the Branch of the LORD is beautiful and glorious, survivors are called holy, and God’s presence shelters the restored assembly.

In this chapter

Leads into

Isaiah sees the LORD high and lifted up, confesses his uncleanness, receives cleansing, and is commissioned to preach to a people whose persistent hardness will continue until devastating judgment leaves only a remnant.

Key understandingExplore deeper

The vineyard song turns Judah’s guilt into a memorable parable. The LORD had given His people every covenant advantage, yet the expected fruit of justice and righteousness was replaced by bloodshed and distress.

The interpretive center of Isaiah 5 is the chapter’s own movement: privilege increases accountability. Read its poetry, signs, historical references, and later biblical connections from that center rather than treating isolated phrases as detached slogans.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Privilege increases accountability

The vineyard received exceptional care, so its bad fruit cannot be blamed on neglect by the owner.

God measures public morality

Land-grabbing, intoxication, moral confusion, bribery, and injustice are all matters of divine concern.

Rejecting God’s word leads to judgment

The chapter connects despising the law and word of the Holy One with coming devastation.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Matthew 21:33-44

Jesus’ vineyard parable echoes Isaiah’s vineyard imagery while applying it to unfaithful leadership.

Isaiah 27:2-6

Later Isaiah returns to vineyard imagery with a future song of divine protection and fruitfulness.

Romans 1:25-32

Paul’s description of moral inversion and rejected truth resonates with Isaiah’s woe on calling evil good and good evil.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Do not read the vineyard only as an abstract symbol of individual spirituality.

Isaiah explicitly identifies the vineyard with the house of Israel and Judah.

Do not isolate 'woe unto them that call evil good' from the chapter’s concrete sins.

The warning sits among specific examples of greed, drunkenness, pride, and judicial corruption.

Read Isaiah 5 watching for…

the care given to the vineyard

what fruit the LORD expected

the six woes and the sins they identify

the wordplay between justice and bloodshed

the foreign nation summoned as an instrument of judgment

Chapter outline3 sections

1-7The LORD’s carefully tended vineyard produces wild grapes 8-17Woes fall on greed, drunkenness, and careless feasting 18-30Woes continue against proud sinners, and a distant nation comes as judgment

Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:

And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.

What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?

And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:

And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

In mine ears said the LORD of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.

Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah.

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!

And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands.

Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.

Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled:

But the LORD of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.

Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat.

Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope:

That say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it!

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!

Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink:

Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!

Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

Therefore is the anger of the LORD kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly:

None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken:

Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind:

Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it.

And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.