Isaiah and the Twelve

Parallels, Similarities and Differences

Richard Bautch, Joachim Eck, Burkard M. Zapff, Richard Bautch, Joachim Eck, Burkard M. Zapff

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783110705737
• eBook ISBN: 9783110705881
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Reference

Die Frage der Beziehung zwischen dem Jesajabuch und dem Buch der Zwölf Propheten ist angesichts vielfältiger Berührungen sprachlicher und motivischer Art zentral, jedoch hinsichtlich der damit verbundenen möglichen Implikationen bislang nur ungenügend bearbeitet.

Im Rahmen eines internationalen Kongresses, der vom 31.Mai bis 3.Juni 2018 an der Katholischen Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt stattfand, suchten Fachleute des Zwölfprophetenbuches bzw. des Jesajabuches mit unterschiedlichen methodischen Ansätzen ein umfassenderes Bild der verschiedenen Arten von Beziehungen oder thematischen Berührungen zu erarbeiten, die entweder für die beiden Corpora als ganze oder für spezifische Teile beider charakteristisch sind, um daraus entsprechende Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen. Das Ergebnis ist ein Überblick zur Vielfalt der semantischen, intertextuellen, literarischen, redaktionellen, historischen und theologischen Aspekte der Beziehungen zwischen dem Jesajabuch und dem Zwölfprophetenbuch, die einlinigen Lösungsvorschlägen zur Erklärung des Zustandekommens dieser Bezüge widerstreiten.

III Thematic Threads in the Book of Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve

The Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard (Isa 5:1-7): Its Position in the Book of Isaiah and Its Reception in Late Layers of Isaiah and the Twelve

Joachim Eck

Article note

I would like to express my gratitude to the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, which granted me a postdoctoral fellowship and thus supported the finalization of this article. For discussion of the topic see Rüdiger Bartelmus, “Beobachtungen zur literarischen Struktur des sog. Weinberglieds (Jes 5,1-7). Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der formgeschichtlichen Methode bei der Interpretation von Texten aus dem corpus propheticum,” in Auf der Suche nach dem archimedischen Punkt der Textinterpretation: Studien zu einer philologisch-linguistisch fundierten Exegese alttestamentlicher Texte, ed. Rüdiger Bartelmus (Zürich: Pano, 2002): 319-336 (here 319-325); Rebecca W. Poe Hays, “Sing Me a Parable of Zion: Isaiah’s Vineyard (5:1-7) and Its Relation to the ‘Daughter Zion’ Tradition,” JBL 135 (2016): 743-761 (here 746-747); Hugh G. M. Williamson, Isaiah 1-5, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2006): 327-328; John T. Willis, “The Genre of Isaiah 5:1-7,” JBL 96 (1977): 337-362.

אָשִׁירָה נָּא לִידִידִי שִׁירַת דּוֹדִי לְכַרְמוֹ “Let me sing for my good friend a song about him, my dear one, regarding his vineyard …” (Isa 5:1a). Who would anticipate, when listening for the first time to these poetic lines, that they are the beginning of one of the harshest prophecies of doom in the Old Testament? The power, depth and rhetorical art of Isaiah’s Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard (Isa 5:1-7) has fascinated listeners and readers from the very first moment. Therefore, it is no wonder that this poem already found its first echoes both in the book of Isaiah itself and the book of the Twelve, namely in Micah. At the same time, Isaiah’s song is one of the most puzzling prophecies. For instance, the question of its genre is extremely hard to answer. Is it a love song, a lawsuit, a satirical polemic or simply a prophecy of doom, just to name four of the many proposals that have been considered? Since this matter is not primarily relevant when dealing with the reception of Isa 5:1-7 in late layers of Isaiah and Micah, the voluminous scholarly debate on this issue need not be recapitulated here.¹ We may therefore proceed with the structure, which stands out because it is both simple and complex.

1 The Structure of Isa 5:1-7

The structure of the Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard² is marked by several changes of the identity of the speaker. In v. 1a, the prophet announces a song about³ an intimate friend who owned a vineyard.⁴ This introduction is followed by the first part of the song in vv. 1b-2, where the prophet recites in third person perspective the story of his dear friend who cultivated a vineyard with great diligence. But it yielded foul fruit instead of good grapes.⁵

In the subsequent verse 3, the particle וְעַתָּה marks the beginning of a new section.⁶ The song proper already seems to be over⁷ because the text now directly turns to the audience, who are addressed as the people of Jerusalem and Judah. They are asked to render judgment between “me and my vineyard”. Quite unexpectedly, the prophet turns out to represent the voice of a different person here, namely that of his dear friend who owns the vineyard. He seems to represent him authentically and with full authority as he speaks on his behalf in first person singular. Here, the question arises by what authority he does this.⁸ This refers to the next chapter, Isa 6, where the question is answered by Isaiah’s prophetic vocation. Like Isa 5:1-2, the vocation account is also told from a first person singular perspective. Isaiah 5:4 then presents two questions to the audience for judgement. These, however, are rhetorical in nature⁹ so that verse 4 prompts the direction of the judgement which the audience is asked to make by verse 3.¹⁰ Since the prophet already gave testimony of the perfect diligence which the owner applied to his vineyard (v. 2), the answer to the question of verse 4a what else he could have done is obviously “nothing”. Verse 4b is also rhetorical in meaning since the vineyard owner is clearly not interested in learning a variety of possible natural influences which cannot be controlled by an ordinary human wine-grower but may indeed cause a perfectly cultivated vineyard to yield bad fruit or even no fruit at all. Instead, the tone of the vineyard owner’s question in v. 4b indicates the apodictic character of his expectation. He seems to have controlled and averted all possible influences that might have caused the vineyard to yield foul fruit. Thus, the rhetorical question in v. 4b gives a slight hint of the vineyard owner’s universal divine power. The rhetorical questions in v. 4 do not ask what they ask but they raise questions about the vineyard owner who asks them.

The next section, vv. 5-6, is again introduced by the particle וְעַתָּה “now”, which here marks the progress from the verdict, which is implied in v. 4, to the sentence.¹¹ Since the questions in v. 4 are rhetorical, the vineyard owner does not wait for the judgement he asked for but interrupts the judicial considerations of his audience and announces his own judgement against the vineyard. He intends to destroy its protection from wild animals, to stop all pruning and hoeing, and even to command the clouds not to rain upon it. The last-mentioned command already indicates that the vineyard owner must either be at least a prophet like Elijah, who successfully performed a ritual for rain after his triumph over the 400 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:41-46), or, more probable, God himself, whose commands the clouds obey.¹²

Nonetheless, the vineyard owner’s identity remains obscure until it is clarified in v. 7, the last section of the song. Introduced by the emphatic particle כִּי, this final passage now speaks of כֶרֶם יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת “the vineyard of YHWH Sabaoth”, thus revealing the identity of the prophet’s friend. Since verse 7 refers to the vineyard owner, who turns out to be YHWH Sabaoth, in third person singular, and since the same verse identifies his vineyard with the house of Israel and the people of Judah, it is also obvious that the speaker’s identity has changed again. The prophet here speaks with his own voice as he did in the introduction and the first section of the song (vv.1a and 1b-2).¹³ The metaphorical meaning of the unfruitfulness of the vineyard is then explained in v. 7b. While justice and righteousness (מִשְׁפָּט and צְדָקָה) should have grown in the society of Judah like good grapes in a well-cultivated vineyard, the foul fruit in fact produced stands for bloodshed and cries of distress (מִשְׂפָּח and צְעָקָה).

In sum, Isa 5:1-7 consists of five sections. After the introduction by the prophet (v. 1a), the following four main sections are characterized by a chiastic pattern which results from changes in the speaker’s voice as illustrated in the chart below. Although the prophet’s song proper already ends in v. 2,¹⁴ the subsequent prophetic interaction cannot be separated from it as it is necessary to understand its meaning and vice versa. Therefore, the Isaiah 5:1-7 forms a literary unit.¹⁵

Introduction Verse 1a:		Prophet’s voice	Announcement of a song about his dear friend, who had a vineyard
Song and prophetic interaction	Verses 1b-2:	Prophet’s voice	The story of the friend’s efforts devoted to his vineyard and the disappointing results
	Verses 3-4:	Friend’s voice	Speaking with his friend’s voice, the prophet requires his audience to render a judgment concerning his own and the vineyard’s behaviour
	Verses 5-6:	Friend’s voice	Announcement of the prophet’s friend that he will destroy and abandon the vineyard
	Verse 7:	Prophet’s voice	Identification of the...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• I Analyses Concerning the Relationships between the Book of Isaiah and Books Associated with Pre-exilic Prophets
• II Analyses Concerning the Relationships between Later Layers of Isaiah and Later Layers of the Book of the Twelve
• III Thematic Threads in the Book of Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve
• IV Festvortrag: Exegesis of the Prophets from the Perspective of Systematic Theology
• V Synthesis
• List of Contributors
• Subject Index