Isaiah 5-6

The Message

^3-4 “Now listen to what I’m telling you,
    you who live in Jerusalem and Judah.
What do you think is going on
    between me and my vineyard?
Can you think of anything I could have done
    to my vineyard that I didn’t do?
When I expected good grapes,
    why did I get bitter grapes?

^5-6 “Well now, let me tell you
    what I’ll do to my vineyard:
I’ll tear down its fence
    and let it go to ruin.
I’ll knock down the gate
    and let it be trampled.
I’ll turn it into a patch of weeds, untended, uncared for—
    thistles and thorns will take over.
I’ll give orders to the clouds:
    ‘Don’t rain on that vineyard, ever!’”

⁷ Do you get it? The vineyard of God-of-the-Angel-Armies
    is the country of Israel.
All the men and women of Judah
    are the garden he was so proud of.
He looked for a crop of justice
    and saw them murdering each other.
He looked for a harvest of righteousness
    and heard only the moans of victims.

^11-17 Doom to those who get up early
    and start drinking booze before breakfast,
Who stay up all hours of the night
    drinking themselves into a stupor.
They make sure their banquets are well-furnished
    with harps and flutes and plenty of wine,
But they’ll have nothing to do with the work of God,
    pay no mind to what he is doing.
Therefore my people will end up in exile
    because they don’t know the score.
Their “honored men” will starve to death
    and the common people die of thirst.
Sheol developed a huge appetite,
    swallowing people nonstop!
Big people and little people alike
    down that gullet, to say nothing of all the drunks.
The down-and-out on a par
    with the high-and-mighty,
Windbag boasters crumpled,
    flaccid as a punctured bladder.
But by working justice,
    God-of-the-Angel-Armies will be a mountain.
By working righteousness,
    Holy God will show what “holy” is.
And lambs will graze
    as if they owned the place,
Kids and calves
    right at home in the ruins.

^18-19 Doom to you who use lies to sell evil,
    who haul sin to market by the truckload,
Who say, “What’s God waiting for?
    Let him get a move on so we can see it.
Whatever The Holy of Israel has cooked up,
    we’d like to check it out.”

²⁰ Doom to you who call evil good
    and good evil,
Who put darkness in place of light
    and light in place of darkness,
Who substitute bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter!

^21-23 Doom to you who think you’re so smart,
    who hold such a high opinion of yourselves!
All you’re good at is drinking—champion boozers
    who collect trophies from drinking bouts
And then line your pockets with bribes from the guilty
    while you violate the rights of the innocent.

²⁴ But they won’t get by with it. As fire eats stubble
    and dry grass goes up in smoke,
Their souls will atrophy,
    their achievements crumble into dust,
Because they said no to the revelation
    of God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
Would have nothing to do
    with The Holy of Israel.

^25-30 That’s why God flamed out in anger against his people,
    reached out and knocked them down.
The mountains trembled
    as their dead bodies piled up in the streets.
But even after that, he was still angry,
    his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.
He raises a flag, signaling a distant nation,
    whistles for people at the ends of the earth.
And here they come—
    on the run!
None drag their feet, no one stumbles,
    no one sleeps or dawdles.
Shirts are on and pants buckled,
    every boot is spit-polished and tied.
Their arrows are sharp,
    bows strung,
The hooves of their horses shod,
    chariot wheels greased.
Roaring like a pride of lions,
    the full-throated roars of young lions,
They growl and seize their prey,
    dragging it off—no rescue for that one!
They’ll roar and roar and roar on that Day,
    like the roar of ocean billows.
Look as long and hard as you like at that land,
    you’ll see nothing but darkness and trouble.
Every light in the sky
    will be blacked out by the clouds.

^11-13 Astonished, I said,
    “And Master, how long is this to go on?”
He said, “Until the cities are emptied out,
    not a soul left in the cities—
Houses empty of people,
    countryside empty of people.
Until I, God, get rid of everyone, sending them off,
    the land totally empty.
And even if some should survive, say a tenth,
    the devastation will start up again.
The country will look like pine and oak forest
    with every tree cut down—
Every tree a stump, a huge field of stumps.
    But there’s a holy seed in those stumps.”