Isaiah 5

Woe to those who join house to house, lay field to field, until no room, and you dwell alone in the middle of the land. Wesley: that they alone may be lords, and all others tenants and servants.

The woe falls on Judah’s hunger for land. Adding a field is not the sin; squeezing the neighbor until you sit alone is. The vineyard of 5:7 now eats the next plot.

Calvin: not wrong in itself to add field to field; he looks at the mind that never has enough. They would wish other men removed from the earth. A man left alone cannot plough. God linked men so they need one another.

Covetousness, not square footage. House to house, field to field, dwell alone.

The LORD of Armies has sworn in my ears: many houses will be desolate, even great and beautiful ones, without inhabitant. Wesley: I heard God speak what I am about to utter.

God swears an oath over the palaces. The joined houses of v. 8 stand empty.

Calvin: something must be supplied—the Lord sits as judge. Covetous men do not think He observes. If not: a form of oath. Just punishment: He chastises those who would not be content with a moderate portion. Palaces become receptacles of owls.

None of this escapes His ears. Lord of hosts, many houses, desolate, without inhabitant.

Ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed but an ephah. Wesley: the bath about eight gallons—an acre not one gallon; an ephah the tenth of a homer; they lose nine parts of their seed.

“Yield”—the fertile hill of 5:1 now starves.

Calvin: the same blight on fields as on houses. Ten acres, one bath—soil so barren it yields scarcely a tenth. Men blame the niggardliness of the soil; the curse is on covetousness that swallowed the goodness of God.

He withholds the increase they stored for themselves. Both see: ten acres, one bath, homer, ephah.

Woe to those who rise up early to run after strong drink, who stay late as wine inflames them. A second woe beside the land-woe.

Judah drinks from dawn until dark. The run and the tarrying that never looks up.

Calvin: from morning to twilight they continue carousals. Abundance and luxury join. To rise early is to be earnest—here, earnest for drink, contrary to rising for work (Ps 104:23).

Drunkenness is another abuse of God’s gifts. Early, strong drink, late, wine inflames.

Lyre, tambourine, and flute, with wine, are at their feasts; but they don’t respect the work of the LORD, neither have they considered the operation of his hands. Wesley: they give themselves wholly to luxury; the work is His judgments, inflicted and threatened, which required another course of life.

Music is not the charge; refusing to regard is. They could have looked.

Calvin: he does not blame music, a science not to be despised; he describes a nation swimming in luxury. They do not consider why the Lord supplies them, or that they were born to obey God, not to wallow. Worse than beasts if they will not direct their minds to the Author of life.

The operation of his hands includes the coming exile. Neither side disputes this: lyre, harp, feasts, not regard, work of His hands.

Therefore my people go into captivity for lack of knowledge. Their honorable men are famished, and their multitudes are parched with thirst. Wesley: no serious consideration of God’s works, of their own duty and danger; honourable men who thought themselves out of reach of famine.

Captivity follows “lack of knowledge”—Wesley calls it a failure to consider God’s works and their own danger. Arminians read the ignorance as chosen neglect, not mere misfortune.

Calvin: not that teachers failed, but voluntary ignorance. They perished because they despised instruction. My people: a nation separated to have God near, shutting its eyes in so much light. Captivity is already in part inflicted. Ignorance is sometimes near, sometimes remote: they refuse to learn, and yet it does not excuse them. The source of calamities is that we do not allow ourselves to be taught by the word of God.

They would not be taught; the exile is His sentence. My people, exile, lack of knowledge, hungry, thirst.

Therefore Sheol has enlarged its desire and opened its mouth without measure; the nobility of Jerusalem and her crowds go down into it, her revelers and all who celebrate in her. Wesley: he that spends all his days in mirth and jollity.

Death opens wider than the feast. The mouth of the grave answers the open mouth of wine.

Calvin: hell as an insatiable beast. He speaks as if the event were already before their eyes. Nobles and low rank together—none escape. Therefore: these things do not happen by chance.

The appetite is His judgment, not fortune. Agreed on both sides: enlarged, mouth, nobility, multitude, revelers.

Man is humbled, each one brought low, the eyes of the haughty brought low. The refrain of 2:11 after a new catalogue.

High and low, still their eyes until they fall.

Calvin: adam and ish—mean and mighty. Design of chastisement: His justice shines when He punishes. Hypocrites become more insolent when not struck; He will be exalted in their destruction.

“Humbled”—the same day against pride. Undisputed: man, brought low, haughty eyes.

The LORD of Armies is exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness. Wesley: exalted by this just judgment; sanctified—appears to be a holy God by righteous judgments.

Both traditions confess that the LORD is exalted in justice. His holiness is seen in the sentence. Justice here is the vineyard’s missing fruit now executed.

Calvin: the formal cause of His excellence. He will be raised when He shows Himself judge. Unlikely that the wicked continue in prosperity while His glory is set aside. He is holy by nature and must be sanctified; destruction hangs over the wicked that rebellion may be subdued.

He cannot deny Himself. Lord of hosts, justice, Holy God, righteousness.

Then the lambs will graze as in their pasture, and strangers eat the ruins of the rich. Wesley: when God has finished that judgment; lambs—the poor and harmless left when the rich are carried captive; waste places of the fat ones; strangers—poor Israelites left as vine-dressers (2 Kings 25:12), strangers to that land as not its owners.

Leftover poor on seized ground. The vineyard’s soil feeds someone after the grabbers go.

Calvin: consolation for the godly who tremble at the threatenings. He will be a faithful shepherd to His lambs. The haughty who oppressed the poor boasted they were the Church; they are goats. Waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat: the children of God, banished as foreigners, will regain what tyrants seized.

The flock remains when the fat are gone. Lambs graze, ruins of the rich.