Yesaya 5:1

A Love Song Gone Sour

5:1 I ¹  will sing to my love –

a song to my lover about his vineyard. ² 

My love had a vineyard

on a fertile hill. ³ 

Yesaya 51:3

51:3 Certainly the Lord will console Zion;

he will console all her ruins.

He will make her wilderness like Eden,

her desert like the Garden of the Lord.

Happiness and joy will be restored to ⁴  her,

thanksgiving and the sound of music.

Yesaya 58:11

58:11 The Lord will continually lead you;

he will feed you even in parched regions. ⁵ 

He will give you renewed strength, ⁶ 

and you will be like a well-watered garden,

like a spring that continually produces water.

Yesaya 61:11

61:11 For just as the ground produces its crops

and a garden yields its produce,

so the sovereign Lord will cause deliverance ⁷  to grow,

and give his people reason to praise him in the sight of all the nations. ⁸ 

[5:1]  ¹ tn It is uncertain who is speaking here. Possibly the prophet, taking the role of best man, composes a love song for his friend on the occasion of his wedding. If so, יָדִיד (yadid) should be translated “my friend.” The present translation assumes that Israel is singing to the Lord. The word דוֹד (dod, “lover”) used in the second line is frequently used by the woman in the Song of Solomon to describe her lover.

[5:1]  ² sn Israel, viewing herself as the Lord’s lover, refers to herself as his vineyard. The metaphor has sexual connotations, for it pictures her capacity to satisfy his appetite and to produce children. See Song 8:12.

[5:1]  ³ tn Heb “on a horn, a son of oil.” Apparently קֶרֶן (qeren, “horn”) here refers to the horn-shaped peak of a hill (BDB 902 s.v.) or to a mountain spur, i.e., a ridge that extends laterally from a mountain (HALOT 1145 s.v. קֶרֶן; H. Wildberger, Isaiah, 1:180). The expression “son of oil” pictures this hill as one capable of producing olive trees. Isaiah’s choice of קֶרֶן, a rare word for hill, may have been driven by paronomastic concerns, i.e., because קֶרֶן sounds like כֶּרֶם (kerem, “vineyard”).

[51:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “found in” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[58:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “he will satisfy in parched regions your appetite.”

[58:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “and your bones he will strengthen.”

[61:11]  ⁷ tn Or perhaps, “righteousness,” but the context seems to emphasize deliverance and restoration (see v. 10 and 62:1).

[61:11]  ⁸ tn Heb “and praise before all the nations.”