Grounds For Divorce

Lawsuits are very much in the news nowadays, especially in our nation’s capital. People are suing each other for every reason you can imagine, even over political and religious differences. You can’t keep track of who’s accusing whom of what without a score card, and even that has to be updated almost daily. But even with all the media hype, we still expect a reasonable amount of decorum to prevail in the courtroom itself. After all, the judge can control it just by clearing the room. We certainly do not expect the proceedings to begin with a song.

And yet that is how Isaiah begins God’s suit against Israel. He opens the scene with a love song - what some commentators think could have begun life as a wedding song for the best man, the friend of the bridegroom, to sing at the wedding itself. The vineyard is a metaphor for the bride, and the bride is of course a metaphor for Israel. And the song opens with the tender, careful, devoted courtship of the bride - telling of the gifts the bridegroom bestowed upon her, how he provided for her, and protected her.

But then, unexpectedly, the song turns into an accusation. And suddenly we are in a courtroom with the bride - the vineyard - on trial.

The jurors, many of them, are hill farmers, too. They live in Jerusalem, or nearby. They know what it takes to produce a good yield of grapes. I can see them, can’t you, listening intently to the plaintiff‘s case. They are being asked to say if there is anything at all the owner has left undone, if in any way the owner is at fault in his care of the vineyard, if there is any reason to hope that if the owner changes his methods or his fertilizer or anything else that the vines will begin to bear good fruit. He challenges them to find anything wrong with his care of the land.

But silence is the only answer. There is nothing the owner has left undone. There is nothing more he can do. There is no point in continuing.

Well, as I said, the vineyard is a metaphor for Israel. And the owner of the vineyard is, of course, YHWH God. And this is only one of dozens of courtroom scenes between YHWH and Israel, as he struggles to get them to see how, time after time, they’ve broken the covenant made with them, first at Sinai, and again a generation later when they entered the Promised Land, and then again practically every other generation since. God gave them everything they could have asked for.

He gave them laws to live by. Moses told the people that the surrounding nations would marvel at the wisdom of the law, saying “What great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law I am setting before you today?” [Dt 4:8]

God gave them land to live on: “houses filled with all sorts of goods that they did not fill, hewn cisterns that they did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that they did not plan.” [Dt 6: 11] He promised them rain and sun and harvests in season - if they would only keep their side of the bargain. They didn’t have to earn the land, just take care of it. As Moses reminded them later, “It is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God gave you the land.” [Dt 9:6]

God gave them leaders to follow. Throughout the book of Judges, whenever the people were overrun by one or another of the surrounding nations, they would weep and wail and repent and promise to behave IF ONLY God would save them. AGAIN. From Deborah to Gideon to Samson, God kept sending them people to pull them out of the hot water they themselves had jumped into. He sent them prophets like Samuel. And at last God gave in to their pleadings and gave them a king.

And all God asked for in return was for them to love him and obey his commandments.

But did they?

Of course not.

When Isaiah began his prophetic ministry most of the northern kingdom had already been gobbled up by Assyria. So Judah had the example right in front of their eyes of what happened to a people when God’s favor was withdrawn. And they still had Assyria on their borders to remind them of the danger, and they had Isaiah to tell them what it all meant. But did they get it? Did they connect with the possibility that what happened to the northern kingdom might happen to the southern kingdom if they didn't repent? Of course not.

Although Isaiah tells us the people continued to appear at the temple in Jerusalem to make the official sacrifices, and no doubt to display their Sabbath finery, they also worshiped Ba’al and Ashteroth on their rooftops and in the sacred groves. Their temple attendance wasn’t true worship, not the kind God had asked for; it was just a form of liability insurance - to make sure that whatever they did, they wouldn’t have to cough up for the damages. And besides, If Ba’al and Ashteroth only cared about the offerings, why should the Holy One if Israel be any different?