Isaiah 5:3

"And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you betwixt me and my vineyard. What could I have done more, that I have not done in it? wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; I will break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: and I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor hoed: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for justice, but, behold, oppression; for righteousness, but, behold, a cry."

As Kidner pointed out, this section of Isaiah is a masterpiece. First, Isaiah concealed the identity of the vineyard and the One who planted; and then, when he explained what happened, he asked his hearers to "Judge" between the owner and the vineyard. It is easy to know what the judgment of the people was certain to be in that situation. Next, notice the dramatic shift to the first person on the part of the prophet. Why? Isaiah was God's mouthpiece here and was speaking for God Himself. Notice the promise to "command the clouds" in Isaiah 5:6. Only God could do that. At that point, no doubt, the more discerning of Isaiah's hearers had begun to understand; but then the prophet hit them squarely with the full, literal, unvarnished truth in Isaiah 5:7. God indeed had planted the vineyard which was composed of Israel and Judah. He would now remove all of the protection from his people and cause them to be overrun and destroyed. Furthermore, he restated their guilt in some of the most dramatic words in the Bible, utilizing the device of paronomasia. Hailey explained that the Hebrew here uses pairs of words to contrast what God looked for and what he received. These words, similar, and almost identical in sound have radically different meanings.

"God looked for justice ([~mishpat] in Hebrew) but received bloodshed, or oppression, ([~mispah] in Hebrew). God looked for righteousness ([~tsedakah] in Hebrew) but received a cry ([~seakah] in Hebrew).[5] This play upon the contrasting meanings of similar words is called paronomasia, and will be noted often in this prophecy. Of course, much of the force of such contrasts is lost in translation from one language to another.

In the next section of this chapter (Isaiah 5:8-23) six woes (actually seven) are pronounced upon the corrupt society which had at this point reached a degree of wickedness that would result in their final overthrow. Every so-called civilized society can read in this chapter the prophecy of their own doom. Here are presented the salient features of a human society on the way down.