Isaiah 5: a blues song
The preference for poetry over prose carries on through chapter 5- it's clearly the lyrics of a song, and it's a song that moves from being a love-song in the first two verses to a lament, full of pain and regret. It's helpful to imagine it being performed as a song, by a soul singer in a dimly lit bar in a city somewhere, rather than preached as a neat three point sermon or dissected in a theology book.
The song starts with a guitar picking a melody, drawing on old folk tunes to conjure up a gentle, tender feeling of delight and care for a vineyard, a people. Verse 7 shows us that "The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting." But this bucolic beginning doesn't last long- the singer's voice turns harsh, an electric guitar screams and the bass and drums sound an insistent note of decay and dissolution. The singer looks round the room at those who are attempting to drown their sorrows, and uncovers the burdens they can't avoid dragging along behind them- "Ah, you who drag iniquity along with cords of falsehood, who drag sin along as with cart-ropes." (5:18)
This song has no happy ending- the last chords are minor ones, as the singer whispers the closing phrase: "And if one looks to the land- only darkness and distress; and the light grows dark with clouds." (5:30)
Do we dare leave things like this? Can we sit with this distress? Are we so used to our faith making us feel good, that we long for some good news? Do we expect our reading of the Bible to encourage us, to cheer us up, to promise that things will be OK in the end?
The song starts with a guitar picking a melody, drawing on old folk tunes to conjure up a gentle, tender feeling of delight and care for a vineyard, a people. Verse 7 shows us that "The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting." But this bucolic beginning doesn't last long- the singer's voice turns harsh, an electric guitar screams and the bass and drums sound an insistent note of decay and dissolution. The singer looks round the room at those who are attempting to drown their sorrows, and uncovers the burdens they can't avoid dragging along behind them- "Ah, you who drag iniquity along with cords of falsehood, who drag sin along as with cart-ropes." (5:18)
This song has no happy ending- the last chords are minor ones, as the singer whispers the closing phrase: "And if one looks to the land- only darkness and distress; and the light grows dark with clouds." (5:30)
Do we dare leave things like this? Can we sit with this distress? Are we so used to our faith making us feel good, that we long for some good news? Do we expect our reading of the Bible to encourage us, to cheer us up, to promise that things will be OK in the end?
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