Isaiah 5 - James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary

A DISAPPOINTING VINTAGE

‘He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.’

Isaiah 5:2

I. Consider the distinguishing features which, in God’s allegory, separate the grape from the wild grape.—(1) The good grape is not in a state of nature; the wild grape is. Either it has had no culture, or it has not responded to its culture. Therefore it is wild. The secret of its state lies in that one word ‘wild.’ (2) The wild grape does not grow or ripen into use. It springs, it hangs on the bough, and it falls, for itself. No man is the better for it. None gathers strength or refreshment or delight there. (3) The wild grape has not the sweetness of the true. It is harsh and sour, because (4) the wild grape has never been grafted.

II. The first thing of all, without which everything else in religion is only a blank, is, and must be, a real, living union with the Lord Jesus Christ.—By that union, the life which was unchanged, selfish, tasteless, or bitter, and without Christ, becomes a new, expansive, loving, Christ-like life, and the wild grape in the desert is turned into the true grape of paradise.

Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘This vineyard is, of course, Israel, whom God chose out of the rest of mankind for a very special purpose. Palestine was the very fruitful hill, as far as this earth was concerned, whilst the blessings of the Covenant gave the chosen people a priority among the nations of the world. The fences and hedges were not simply the physical mountainous configuration of the land, but the Divine care, which sheltered the people from the subjugation of the neighbouring nations.’