Isaiah 5:1-7; Sing Me a Sad Song I

1 Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
2 He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watch-tower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.
4 What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
5 And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
6 I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice, but saw bloodshed;
righteousness, but heard a cry!

I. On Singing

Usually when a biblical passage begins with reference to a song, it is a joyful or triumphant occasion. When Moses had led the Israelities through the Red Sea, and the waters covered their Egyptian pursuers, he was exultant. "Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:

I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;/ horse and rider he has thrown into the sea" (Ex. 15:1).

Then, when Moses had finished giving the people all the words of the law, with its blessings and warnings, he "recited the words of this song" (Deut 31:30), which was a song celebrating Yahweh's faithful acts towards the people in the wilderness. So moved was I by these lyrics as a 20 year-old that I spent an evening making up a tune to sing the words of Deut. 32.

Poetry and song, lyrics and music--they are the stuff of ritual celebration for the people. God has delivered you; you sing. The Psalms have the most frequent occurrence of the verb shir ("to sing"), and most of the references are in a celebrative context. For example, in the memorable Psalm about God's being our light and salvation (Ps. 27), the author only uses the verb shir when he is confident of God's deliverance.

"For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;/ he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;/ he will set me high on a rock./ And now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me,/ and I will offer in his tent sacrifcies with shouts of joy./ I will sing and make melody to the Lord" (27:5-6).

But what do you do when you have a sad situation? On one occasion where there was a sad occasion, the people couldn't sing. Recall the Babylonian exile, when the people were tormented by their persecutors. The words of Ps. 137 are etched in our minds:

"1 By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
3 For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
4 How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?"

You can't sing, even a sad song, when you are removed from your land and your temple.

II. On The Beloved

Thus the reader is led to expect with the first words of Is. 5 ("Let me sing") a song of joy. This impression is intensified when we read the next word--literally "to" or "for my beloved." The word translated as "beloved" occurs spottily in the OT except for one book--the Song of Solomon. You recall some of the verses: "I am my beloved's and he is mine" or "I am beloved and his desire is for me" or "The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills" (2:8). The word for beloved (dood or doodah) appears more than two dozen times in that short book. It is almost as if Isaiah either knows of that poetic masterpiece (if it was written at his time) or has access to the thought world that produced it and is reversing or intensifying its meaning. In the Song of Songs the beloved is a love partner, one whose physical beauty and other qualities so excite the heart that it makes a person break forth in song. In Isaiah, however, the beloved is God, one who is hurt because of rejection at the hands of the people.

Thus, if we just read the first few verses of this text, we would be led to expect a happy and victorious song. When the tone of victory (which "song" often connotes) is combined with "beloved," you have all the ingredients for a triumphant love song.

But then, the tone of Isaiah 5 changes, and we must heed that tone--in the next essay.

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