Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 350 · December 16
The Vineyard Inventory
“What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?”
Isaiah begins this passage as a love song: "Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard." Everyone knew that kind of song, and the people listening expected to hear someone praised.
Then comes the list of what the owner did, and the list is the heart of the song. He dug the ground over, and He "gathered out the stones thereof," clearing a hillside by hand, which is the kind of work nobody writes songs about. He "planted it with the choicest vine." He "built a tower in the midst of it," which is what you build when you mean to stay for many harvests. He "made a winepress therein" before there was a single grape to press. That makes five things He did, and every one of them shows that He meant to stay.
Then He asks the listeners to judge: "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" The people giving the verdict do not yet know that they are the vineyard. They answer in their heads before they find out.
What follows takes the list apart. "I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged." Then Isaiah names the vineyard: "For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel." The last line turns on two pairs of Hebrew words that sound almost alike: "he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry." He listened for justice and heard a scream, and in Hebrew the two nearly rhyme. Centuries later, Jesus told the story again in the temple, using the same pictures, and His hearers knew where it came from: "A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower."
So think of one thing God has given you, and answer His question about it as the judge He asks you to be: what more could He have done for it? The honest answer is humbling, because He has already done everything. Yet in Jesus' telling, the owner did one thing more: "Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them." God's answer to a vineyard that disappointed Him was to send His own Son, and that is why there is still hope for what grows in you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 350 is Help from the Creator (Psalm 121:1-2).