What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? [Isaiah 5:4].
I can remember the moment as clearly as if it had occurred just a few minutes ago. In point of fact, almost 56 years have passed since that sunny, clear afternoon and what amounted to an eighth grade study hall, during which I read the final sentence in Shirley Jackson’s masterful short story, “The Lottery,” and fell in love with narratives that have unexpected endings:
“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.
If you aren’t familiar with that phenomenal short work, first published in 1948, that will be a conversation for another day [here’s a link to an electronic reprint of the story as published in The New Yorker]. The power–some say the horror–in Jackson’s story is that its beginning is so innocuous, so matter-of-fact, and yet, its haunting conclusion grabs you and won’t let go.
Well, the prophet Isaiah is no Shirley Jackson, but we see a similar pattern going on in the Old Testament reading appointed for this upcoming Sunday [Isaiah 5:1-7, Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A]. The passage begins as a bard’s song to his “beloved.” Scholars point out that the Hebrew word Isaiah uses for “beloved” here need not imply anything romantic going on between the two. There is, nevertheless, a close relationship between Isaiah, the “singer” of sorts, and the unnamed vineyard owner. Who is Isaiah’s lover or friend? The ambiguity lends force to the text. In Isaiah’s day, the listener would not necessarily have thought Yahweh was the subject/object of the affection.
The song continues with a description of the beloved’s careful preparations for a vineyard. He chose a fertile hillside. He not only tilled the soil, but cleared it of stones. He planted the choicest of vines and erected a watchtower to stand guard over his precious property. Anticipating that all the preparation will lead toward a bumper crop of exquisite grapes and a flavorful vintage, the owner cuts out a winepress as well. And yet, at the end of verse 2, the bard sings that only sadness and disappointment have come to the vineyard owner for, in spite of his careful preparations, “bad” [literally “diseased”] fruit, not good fruit, makes up the harvest.
There’s an important change in verses 3 and 4. Assuming the perspective of the vineyard owner, the singer turns to the audience with a series of rhetorical questions: “What more could I (the vineyard owner) have done? Why was the yield so bad?”
Continuing in the voice or perspective of the beloved owner, we hear what will be done. The creative work earlier performed will be undone. In verses 5-6, we hear that the owner will remove the hedge and protective wall so that the vineyard will be trampled down. The vines will be neither pruned nor cultivated. Thorns and briers will be allowed to grow; it will become a wasteland.
At the end of verse 6, through the owner’s voice, Isaiah offers a strange and unanticipated warning: “I will command the clouds not to rain on it.”
Those who are listening now silently cry out, “Wait! What was that? This is no mortal landowner. Only Yahweh can control the rain. Indeed, in verse 7, the voice turns fully back to that of the prophet, Isaiah, and judgment comes down on all those who will hear:
The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.
The Hebrew scholars, upon whom I depend to understand subtleties in the text, point out that in what we have as verse 7, Isaiah offers a powerful, alliterative word-play. While Yahweh anticipated “justice” (mishpat), Yahweh sees “bloodshed” (mispach). And instead of “righteousness” (tsedaqah), Yahweh hears only “a cry” (tse’aqah). As Old Testament professor, Mark S. Gignilliat (Beeson Divinity School, Samford University) has written, “If Judah would not be Yahweh’s people, then they would not be a people at all.” Indeed, later on in the history of Judah (and Israel), as Isaiah has foretold in this passage, the “vineyard” will be conquered and devastated by stronger neighbors.
Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me; it is the parts that I do understand.” I’m a bit like Twain. The message in Isaiah’s allegorical song is quite clear to me and it leaves me unsettled. It reminds me of a somewhat similar story from Genesis–the story of Adam and Eve. There, too, Yahweh had created a splendid spot, albeit it a garden and not a vineyard. There, too, what Yahweh expected–dare I say it–even hoped for, did not occur. It seems Yahweh is often careful to make special preparations, but Yahweh does not always guarantee the results.
As with Adam and Eve, the vineyard, i.e., the nation of Israel, was given the freedom to respond to God’s generosity in a faithful fashion, or not. Yahweh provided that sort of free will to Adam and Eve, as well as to Israel, because such freedom was necessary if Yahweh was to create and provide for a true loving relationship between himself and “his people.” And what is more, it was precisely the improper use of that freedom/free will, first by Adam and Eve, and then later by the chosen people of Israel, that caused things to go so woefully wrong.
The same is true for you and me. Destructive judgment, like that described in Isaiah 5, comes not based on any need on the part of Yahweh to punish or strike out at sinful humanity. Rather, it derives from the set of natural and destructive forces flowing out of the “vineyard’s” own choices.
Ah, but the destruction of the vineyard isn’t the last word. The story doesn’t end with the Babylonian deportation foretold here in Isaiah. Yahweh won’t allow that. Yahweh is true to his promises even when the vineyard is not. To be sure, the enemy invades and the vineyard is taken down, but Yahweh has a surprise ending that even Shirley Jackson couldn’t see coming: There will be a new vine and new branches.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit … [John 15:1-5].
Since Eden, we’ve all known that Yahweh was a master gardener.
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