Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself.
The abuse of worldly prosperity
Our version is faulty here. Elzas renders, “Israel is a luxurious vine, whose fruit is very abundant.” So our subject is the abuse of prosperity. Some men are very prosperous. Every branch of their life clusters with fruit. Sonic nations are very prosperous. When is prosperity abused?
I. When it is used with an exclusive regard to our own selfish ends. As--
1. For self-indulgence.
2. For self-aggrandisement.
The right which property gives is the right to lay it out for the benefit of our fellow-men.
II. When it is used without a supreme regard to the claims of God. Unless we employ our property according to the directions of the Great Proprietor we abuse the trust. How does God require us to employ our property?
1. For the amelioration of human woes.
2. For the dispersion of human ignorance.
3. For the elevation of the human soul.
To raise it to the knowledge, the image, the fellowship, and the enjoyment of God. How are we, as a nation, using our enormous prosperity? (Homilist.)
The figure of the vine
Israel is a luxuriant vine. Not as in the A.V. “an empty vine,” nor as in the margin A.V. “a vine emptying the fruit which it giveth,” but a vine which pours itself forth, spreads out its branches. It denotes the outward prosperity and abundance which they had enjoyed. The vineyard had been planted with the choicest vine, and diligently cultivated, but it bore wretched fruit, significant of sins against God. (W. Henry Green, D. D., LL. D.)
The Church compared to a vine
1. No plant has a more unpromising outside than the vine.
2. The vine is the most fruitful plant that grows out of the earth.
3. No plant requires so great care as the vine.
4. The vine is the most depending plant in the world, unable to underprop itself, it must have props more than any other plant, and therefore nature has given it tendrils by which it catches hold of anything near it.
5. If it be not fruitful, it is the most unprofitable thing in the world.
6. A vine is the most spreading of plants. It spreads larger than other plants, and fills a great deal of room with its branches.
7. The vine is the softest and most tender of plants, the emblem of peace. But Israel is an empty, or emptying, vine; he makes himself empty.
(1) Emptiness in those who profess themselves to be God’s people is a very great evil. It is unnatural. It is a dishonour to the root. It frustrates the Lord of all the care, and cost, and charge He expends. There is no blessing upon thy soul if thou art “an empty vine.” If there be grace, it cannot but bear fruit. Common gifts shall be taken away, if the vine proves empty. The evil of emptiness is great according to the greatness of opportunities.
(2) Sin will empty a land of all the blessings God has bestowed. Sin is an emptying thing; it empties lands, families, and persons of all their outward comforts.
(3) It is all one, to be an empty Christian, and to bring forth fruit to oneself. Men think that which they bring forth to themselves is clear gain; but this is an infinite mistake, for that which is for thyself is lost, and that which is for God is gained. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Israel as a robbed vine
The prophet means, that Israel was like a vine which is robbed after the ingathering is come: for the word bekok means properly to pillage, or to plunder. The prophet compares the gathering of the grapes to robbing; and this view best suits the place. Israel is like a robbed vine, for it was stripped of its fruit; and then he adds, “he will make fruit for himself.” I understand by the words that Israel would lay up fruit for himself after the robbing, and sacred history confirms this view; for this people, we know, had been in various ways chastised: so, however, that they gathered new strength. For the Lord intended only to admonish them gently, that they might be healed; but nothing was effected by God’s moderation. The case, however, was so, that Israel produced new fruit, as a vine, after having been robbed one year, brings forth a new vintage; for one ingathering does not kill the vine. Thus also Israel did lay up fruit for himself; that is, after the Lord had collected there His vintage, He again favoured the people with His blessing, and, as it were, restored them anew; as vines in the spring throw out their branches, and then produce fruit. God, in the next clause, complains that Israel, after having been once gathered, went on in his own wickedness. This is a useful doctrine. We see how the Lord forbears in inflicting punishments--He does not execute them with the utmost rigour. But how do they act who are thus moderately chastised? As soon as they can recruit their spirits they are carried away by a more head strong inclination, and grow insolent against God. (John Calvin.)
Israel as a vine
A luxuriant vine; one which poureth out, poureth itself out into leaves, abundant in switches (as most old versions explain it), luxuriant in leaves, emptying itself in them, and empty of fruit; like the fig-tree which our Lord cursed. For the more a fruit tree putteth out its strength in leaves and branches, the less and worse fruit it beareth. “The juices which it ought to transmute into wine it disperseth in the ambitious idle shew of leaves and branches.” The sap in the vine is an emblem of His Holy Spirit, through whom alone we can bear fruit. “His grace which was in me,” says St. Paul, “was not in vain.” It is in vain to us, when we waste the stirrings of God’s Spirit in feelings, aspirations, longings, transports, “which bloom their hour and fade.” Like the leaves, these feelings aid in maturing fruit; when there are leaves only, the tree is barren, and “nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned.” “It bringeth forth fruit for itself,” lit. “setteth fruit to, or on, itself.” Luxuriant in leaves, its fruit becomes worthless, and is from itself to itself. It is uncultured (for Israel refused culture), pouring itself out, as it willed, in what it willed. It had a rich shew of leaves, a shew also of fruit, but not for the Lord of the vineyard, since they came to no size or ripeness. Yet to the superficial glance, Israel, at this time, was rich, prosperous, healthy, abundant in all things. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Self-aggrandisement, and its secret
“He bringeth forth fruit unto himself”; and yet, literally, he brings forth no fruit at all, only long stem and tendril, and leaves innumerable; his fruit is all foliage. The figure is very Hebraic and grand. Israel is a vine, and a growing vine, but Israel misses the purpose of the vine by never growing any wine; growing nothing but weedy leaves, and so disappointing men when they come to find fruit thereon, and discover none. The Church is an empty vine. Theology is an empty vine. All religious controversy that is conducted for its own sake--that is to say, with the single view of winning a victory in words--is an empty vine,--luxuriant enough, but it is the luxuriance of ashes. “According to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land, they have made goodly images.” They have gone pari passu with the Almighty--He, the living Father, doing the good, and they, the rebellious men, doing proportionate evil. When the harvest has been plentiful, the idolatry has been large, increasing in urgency and importance; when the vine has brought forth abundantly, another image has been set up. That is the teaching of the prophet; yea, that is the impeachment of God. God may be represented as saying, Your wickedness has been in proportion to My goodness; the more I have given you, the less I have received from you; the larger the prosperity with which I have crowned you, the more zealous have you been in your idolatry; the more lovingly I have revealed Myself to you, the greater your wantonness, selfishness, and rebellion. That is not only Hebrew, it is English; that is not only ancient history, it is the tragedy, the blasphemy of to-day. What is the explanation? Where is the point at which we can stand and say: This is the beginning of the mischief? The answer is in the second verse, “Their heart is divided.” That has always been the difficulty of God; He has so seldom been able to get a consenting heart. God says: These people want to do two irreconcilable things--they want to serve God and Mammon; they want to courteously recognise the existence of Jehovah, and then run to kiss the lips of Baal. Their heart does not all go one way; they cannot wholly throw off the true religion; it has indeed become to them little better than a superstition, but men do not like to gather up all the traditions of the past, and cast them in one bundle into the flowing river, in the hope that it may he carried away and lost for ever. So they come to the altar sometimes; now and again they look in at the church door; intermittently they listen to the old Psalm and the half-remembered hymn; but in the soul of them they are drunk with idolatry. There are persons very anxious to maintain orthodoxy who are the most notorious thieves in society; there are those who would subscribe to any society to defend Sunday, if they might do on Monday just what they liked; they are zealous about the Sabbath, and especially zealous that other people should keep it, but on Monday you would never imagine that there was a Sunday. “Their heart is divided.” (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
The self-shoot the wrong one to cultivate
A little while ago an inexperienced hand had trained a rose-tree over a porch, The leaves of the tree were green, and the growth was strong, but not a flower was there. “Why is this?” inquired the master of a skilled gardener. The answer was given by an act, not by words, for, taking out his pruning knife, the gardener in one moment levelled the rampant growth to the ground. “What have you done?” cried the master. “Don’t you see, sir,” was the reply; “your man has been cultivating the wrong shoot!” and, at the same time, the gardener pointed out the grafted rose, which had barely struggled two inches above the ground, and which the wild shoot had completely overwhelmed. In a few months the graft, set free from the encumbering growth of the wrong shoot, sent out in vigorous life its beautiful branches, and covered the porch with its luxuriance; and there it lives, a parable of heavenly things. Not all the cultivation or training in the world could have made that wrong shoot become a beautiful and flowering tree, neither will the efforts of a whole life succeed in making our “old man” like Christ, or fruitful towards God. God has condemned our nature in the Cross of Christ: He has judicially cut it down; and no fruit fit for God shall grow upon it for ever. The practical word, then, to those Christians who are seeking to produce out of self-fruit acceptable to God is, Do not cultivate the wrong shoot. (H. F. Wetherby.)
Sin the product of man’s free will
This is the oldest illustration of cause and effect known to our race. The Old Testament, with its system of conscience education, is a profound commentary on the subject, its moral law creating a knowledge of sin, its sacrificial system deepening the sense of the guilt of sin, and its prophetic ministry denouncing sin, and bringing the sorrow and suffering following sin home to the hearts of the kings and the people with unflinching courage and precision. None the less striking is this truth when read from the pages of classic heathenism. It is Helen’s crime and that of Paris which brings on sorrow in the downfall of Troy. AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are pagan preachers enunciating the terrible judgments following in the train of wrong-doing. Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton build their poems and construct their dramas upon this foundation. Sin is the product of man’s free will. “Israel bringeth forth fruit unto himself.” In appropriating the gifts of God to self-gratification the Creator has been ignored. Sin is man’s own product. It is the child of our own self-will. While it is true that in every human being there is a persistent tendency to take the wrong direction in moral development, yet no man is ever otherwise than a wilful sinner. The election by the individual will to act counter to the requirements of God is the source of all sin. Again, we see the insidious manner in which sin makes its home in the human heart. Self-interest is pressed into the service of sin, but sin, once getting a foothold, transforms a healthy serf-interest into gross selfishness. Growth and prosperity are turned to sinful uses. In the satiety of self-indulgence, in the greed of self-aggrandisement, in the divided heart, we witness the wreck of God’s purposes as they are related to human life. Into this terrible state of antagonism to the will of God the prophet Hosea declares Israel has come. When the Almighty created man with free will, He, in a sense, “set bounds to His own omnipotence.” From that hour man has held in his will the awful power of resisting God. Sorrow, then, and suffering, are the inevitable results of persistent wilful sin. The moment sin is committed judgment begins with the steady developments of growth. But in the distressing picture of sin and its consequences now before us there is relief afforded. Sad, indeed, would be the lot of man if he were irrevocably doomed to endure the conditions of his terrible fortune. There is promised the overthrow of the dominion of sin by repentance and service in the cause of righteousness. (E. M. Taylor.)