The Song of the Vineyard

¹Let me sing for my well beloved a song of my beloved about his vineyard.

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.

²He dug it up,

gathered out its stones,

planted it with the choicest vine,

built a tower in the middle of it,

and also cut out a wine press in it.

He looked for it to yield grapes,

but it yielded wild grapes.

³“Now, residents of Jerusalem and people of Judah,

please, y’all must judge between me and my vineyard.

⁴What more could have been done to my vineyard, that I have not done for it?

Why, when I looked for it to yield grapes, did it make stink berries?

⁵Now I will tell y’all what I am going to do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge, and it will be eaten up.

I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down.

⁶I will lay it a wasteland.

It won’t be pruned or hoed,

but it will grow briers and thorns.

I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.”

⁷For the vineyard of YHWH Almighty is the house of Israel,

and the people of Judah ʜɪꜱ delightful plant.

Hᴇ looked for justice, but saw oppression,

for righteousness, heard a cry of distress.

Woes and Judgments

⁸Woe to those who add house to house,

and join field to field, until there is no more room,

so that y’all dwell alone in the middle of the land!

⁹In my ears, YHWH Almighty says: “Surely many houses will be desolate,

even great and impressives ones, unoccupied.

¹⁰For ten acres of vineyard will produce only one bath,[#5:10 literally, ten yokes, or the amount of land that ten yokes of oxen can plow in one day, which is about 10 acres or 4 hectares.; #5:10 1 bath is about 22 liters or 5.8 U. S. gallons]

and a homer of seed will produce an ephah.”

¹¹Woe to those who rise up early in the morning for beer,

who stay late into the night that wine might inflame them!

¹²The harp, lyre, tambourine, and flute, with wine, are at their feasts,

but they don’t respect the work of YHWH,

nor do they consider the work of ʜɪꜱ hands.

¹³Therefore my people go into captivity for lack of knowledge.

Their honorable men are starving,

and their masses are parched with thirst.

¹⁴Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite,

and opened its mouth without measure;

and their splendor, their masses, their pomp, and her din of revelry and the jubilant descend into it.

¹⁵So humanity is brought low,

and each person is humbled,

and the eyes of the arrogant ones are humbled;

¹⁶but YHWH Almighty is exalted in justice,

and God the Holy One shows ʜɪꜱ holiness in righteousness.

¹⁷Then the lambs will graze as in their pasture,

and strangers will eat the ruins of the rich.

¹⁸Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood,

and wickedness as with cart rope,

¹⁹who say, “Let ʜɪᴍ make hurry do ʜɪꜱ work quickly, so that we may see it!

Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come,

so that we may know it!”

²⁰Woe to those who call evil good

and good evil,

who put darkness for light

and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

and sweet for bitter!

²¹Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,

and prudent in their own sight!

²²Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine,

and champions at mixing strong drink,

²³who acquit the guilty for a bribe,

but deny justice for the innocent!

²⁴Therefore as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,

and as the dry grass sinks down in the flame,

so their root will decay,

and their blossom go up as dust,

because they have rejected the law of YHWH Almighty,

and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

²⁵Therefore YHWH’s anger burns against ʜɪꜱ people,

and ʜᴇ has stretched out ʜɪꜱ hand against them and has struck them.

The mountains tremble,

and their dead bodies are as refuse in the middle of the streets.

For all this, ʜɪꜱ anger is not turned away,

but ʜɪꜱ hand is still stretched out.

²⁶Hᴇ will lift up a banner to the nations from far away,

and ʜᴇ will whistle for them from the end of the earth.

Look, they will come speedily and swiftly.

²⁷No one will be weary nor stumble among them;

no one will slumber nor sleep,

neither will the belt of their waist be untied,

nor the strap of their sandals be broken,

²⁸whose arrows are sharp,

and all their bows bent.

Their horses’ hoofs will be like flint,

and their wheels like a whirlwind.

²⁹Their roaring will be like a lioness.

They will roar like young lions.

Yes, they will roar,

and seize their prey and carry it off,

and there will be no one to deliver.

³⁰They will roar against them in that day like the roaring of the sea.

If one looks to the land, there is only darkness and distress.

The light is darkened in its clouds.