Isaiah’s Vineyard Poem

ca. 1200–332 BCE

About This Entry

This poem, also called “a song,” begins as an imitation or parody of a love song, based on the metaphor of the love—that is, the covenant bond—between God and Israel. But in this poem, the relationship goes awry. In the parable of the lover (God) and his vineyard (Israel), the vineyard fails to respond to the loving care bestowed upon it and produces only inedible grapes. The disappointed lover determines to withhold his care and let the vineyard go to ruin. Thus, Isaiah warns of the divine punishment Israel deserves for its lack of social justice.

¹Let me sing for my beloved

A song of my lover about his vineyard.

My beloved had a vineyard

On a fruitful hill.

²He broke the ground, cleared it of stones,

And planted it with choice vines.

He built a watchtower inside it,

He even hewed a wine press in it;

For he hoped it would yield grapes.

Instead, it yielded wild grapes.

³“Now, then,

Dwellers of Jerusalem

And men of Judah,

You be the judges

Between Me and My vineyard:

⁴What more could have been done for My vineyard

That I failed to do in it?

Why, when I hoped it would yield grapes,

Did it yield wild grapes?

⁵“Now I am going to tell you

What I will do to My vineyard:

I will remove its hedge,

That it may be ravaged;

I will break down its wall,

That it may be trampled.

⁶And I will make it a desolation;

It shall not be pruned or hoed,

And it shall be overgrown with briers and thistles.

And I will command the clouds

To drop no rain on it.”

⁷For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts

Is the House of Israel,

And the seedlings he lovingly tended

Are the men of Judah.

^aAnd He hoped for justice,

But behold, injustice;

For equity,

But behold, iniquity! [ . . . ]

Notes

This sentence contains two wordplays: “And He hoped for mishpaṭ, And there is mispah [exact meaning uncertain]; / For ṣedaqah, But there is ṣe‘aqah [lit. ‘outcry’].”