Isaiah 5:8-30

The Six Woes of God (Isaiah 5:8).

A series of woes are now declared on the people of Israel because of their various sins. The vineyard had produced smelly grapes, now woe must come on it. They are a warning that God sees the ways of all men, whether in business, in pleasure-seeking, in their thinking or in their attitudes, and will surely call them all to account. Woes in Scripture can be divided into two kinds, those which express God's determination to act in judgment, and those which represent sad events for people in the course of history (e.g. Matthew 24:19). These six woes are of the first kind.

The woes with their aftermath can be analysed as follows:

a The first woe is on those who have bought up or seized by force the fields of the people, so as to form for themselves large estates, actions which will finally bring desolation on them (Isaiah 5:8).

b The second woe is on the drunken behaviour and revelry of the people which will finally result in their humiliation (Isaiah 5:11).

c The third woe is on those who sin deeply, drawing sin with cart-ropes, and yet they cry out that they want to see God's deliverance (Isaiah 5:18).

d The fourth woe is on those who have twisted truth for their own purposes, calling evil good, and good evil, darkness light, and light darkness, what is bitter, sweet, and what is sweet, bitter (Isaiah 5:20).

c The fifth woe is on those who are self-opiniated and self-conceited (Isaiah 5:21).

b The sixth woe is on those who are heavy drinkers, resulting in injustice and their despising the Instruction of Yahweh, and will result in lives which produce only rottenness (the wild grapes?) (Isaiah 5:22).

a The result of the woes is that Yahweh will bring judgment upon them, bringing darkness and distress and taking over the land (from those who had appropriated it for themselves in Isaiah 5:8) (Isaiah 5:25).

In ‘a' the people who try to take possession of the land and exalt themselves will in the parallel be humbled, and their land will be filled with darkness and distress. In ‘b' the heavy drinkers will be the same in the parallel, in both cases resulting in humiliation and desolation. Note how in both cases the words end with a reference to Yahweh of hosts and the Holy One of Israel. ‘C' refers to those who ‘draw sin with cart-ropes', but are blasphemous in their utterances, exulting in their sins, while in the parallel are those who are self-opinionated and self-conceited. In ‘d' we have the centre of all sin, the turning of good into evil, and light into darkness.