UST GEN EXO LEV NUM DEU JOS JDG RUTH 1 SAM 2 SAM 1 KI 2 KI 1 CHR 2 CHR EZRA NEH EST JOB PSA PROV ECC SNG ISA JER LAM EZE DAN HOS JOEL AMOS OBA YNA MIC NAH HAB ZEP HAG ZEC MAL MAT MARK LUKE YHN ACTs ROM 1 COR 2 COR GAL EPH PHP COL 1 TH 2 TH 1 TIM 2 TIM TIT PHM HEB YAC 1 PET 2 PET 1 YHN 2 YHN 3 YHN YUD REV

ISA C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C13 C14 C15 C16 C17 C18 C19 C20 C21 C22 C23 C24 C25 C26 C27 C28 C29 C30 C31 C32 C33 C34 C35 C36 C37 C38 C39 C40 C41 C42 C43 C44 C45 C46 C47 C48 C49 C50 C51 C52 C53 C54 C55 C56 C57 C58 C59 C60 C61 C62 C63 C64 C65 C66

UST ISA Chapter 5

◄ ISA 5 ► ║ ═ ©

5 Now I am going to sing a song for my dear friend,

about him and his vineyard.

He had a vineyard on a very fertile hillside.

2 My friend plowed the ground and cleared away the stones.

Then he planted very good grapevines on that ground.

In the middle of the vineyard, he built a watchtower,

and he dug a pit for squeezing the grapes.

He expected to harvest good grapes,

but the vines produced only sour grapes.

3 Now this is what Yahweh says:

“You people who live in Jerusalem and other places in Judah,

I am like the friend, and you are like his vineyard;

now judge which of us has done what is right.

4 What more could I have done for you

than what I have already done?

I expected you to do good deeds,

so you should not have done evil deeds,

like the vineyard that produced only sour grapes!

5 So I am telling you now that I will no longer protect Judah,

the place that is like my vineyard.

It will be as if I am cutting down and burning up

the hedge around a vineyard that kept out small animals.

It will be as if I am scattering the stones from the wall around a vineyard

that kept out large animals so that they can walk over the stones and eat the fruit.

6 It will be as if I make that vineyard a place where no useful crops grow,

where no one prunes the vines or hoes the soil,

where weeds grow wildly,

and on which rain does not fall from the clouds.”

7 The Israelites are like a vineyard that belongs to Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies.

The people of Judah are like a garden that he has carefully tended.

He expected them to act justly,

but instead, they murdered others.

He expected them to do what was right,

but instead, he heard people crying for help because others were attacking them violently.

8 How terrible it will be for people who acquire the houses and lands around them

so that others have no place to live

and they themselves live alone in the land.

9 I heard Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, solemnly swear,

“Some day, many of those huge houses will be empty;

no one will be living in those beautiful mansions.

10 The vines on ten acres of land will produce only about 22 liters of juice,

and someone who plants 220 liters of seed will harvest only 22 liters of grain.”

11 How terrible it will be for people who get up early each morning

to start drinking beer,

and who stay awake into the night

drinking wine until they are completely drunk.

12 They hold big parties and serve plenty of wine.

At those parties, people play harps and lyres and tambourines and flutes.

But they do not recognize or understand

what Yahweh is doing.

13 Because the Israelites do not know him,

enemies will carry them away as captives to another land.

Both the leaders and the common people

will be very hungry and thirsty.

14 It is as if the place where dead people go is making more room for them

and is eager to have as many of them as possible.

Both the leaders and the common people will go down into that place,

all those people who liked to have fun carousing.

15 Both the common people and their leaders will no longer be so arrogant.

People who now are proud will have a humbler attitude.

16 But people will praise Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, because he acts justly.

God is holy, and when he does what is right, people will recognize that he is holy.

17 Then lambs will eat grass as they usually do,

and wandering animals will graze on land that is now desolate

but on which people formerly fattened their animals.

18 How terrible it will be for people who work hard to keep sinning,

as if their sin were a heavy cart that they were pulling with ropes

and as if the lies they tell to maintain their sin were those ropes.

19 Those people say about the holy God of the Israelites,

“If he is going to punish us, let him do that right away.

Let him do what he has decided to do.

We would like to know what this punishment is actually going to be.”

20 How terrible it will be for people who say

that evil actions are good actions and that good actions are evil actions.

It is as if they are saying that darkness is light and that light is darkness

or that bitter things are sweet and sweet things are bitter.

21 How terrible it will be for people who think that they are wise

and consider themselves to be clever.

22 How terrible it will be for people who think that they are heroes

because they are able to drink much wine

and who boast about being able to mix things into beer to make it stronger.

23 Those people accept bribes to let guilty people go free,

and they punish innocent people instead.

24 Therefore, just as flames of fire burn up stubble

and dry grass shrivels up in flames,

it will be as though those people are plants whose roots have rotted

and whose flowers have withered.

This will happen because they rejected the law of Yahweh,

the commander of the heavenly armies.

The holy God of the Israelites

told them what he wanted them to do, but they ignored him.

25 As a result, Yahweh is extremely angry with his people.

He has already used his power to punish them.

He punished them so severely that it was as if the mountains shook.

So many people died that others could not bury them all

and their bodies remained in the streets as if they were garbage.

Even so, Yahweh continues to be very angry,

and he is ready to use his power to punish his people further.

26 Yahweh will summon the armies of distant nations

as if he were raising a battle flag to gather them

or as if he were whistling for them so loudly

that they could hear him even though they were very far away.

A foreign army will come very rapidly to attack Jerusalem.

27 All its soldiers will be strong and capable.

They will not need to sleep very much.

All of their equipment will be in good condition,

so they will be ready to fight in battles.

28 They will have sharpened their arrows,

and they will have their bows ready to shoot those arrows.

The horses in this army have strong hooves that do not break,

as if they were stone,

and it has many fast chariots whose wheels stir up great clouds of dust,

as if there were a whirlwind.

29 The sound of this army approaching will be like the roar of a great lion.

A lion growls and then pounces on an animal and carries it away,

and no one can rescue that animal.

30 In the same way, this army will make a great sound as it approaches to attack,

like the loud sound that the waves of the sea make when they crash onto the land.

When this army arrives, if someone looks across the land,

he will see the army darkening it like the shadow of a cloud,

and he will see the people suffering great distress.