Isaiah 27
Big idea: The vineyard of chapter 5 is replanted, and every detail is reversed: instead of a hedge removed and no rain, a keeper who waters it every moment and guards it night and day, and an offer of peace made twice to the thorns.
The two vineyard songs are the frame of the first half of the book — 5:1-7 sets the failure, and 27:2-6 answers it point for point.
27:1–13 — I am its keeper; I will water it every moment
The chapter opens with a monster and a sword: in that day Yahweh with his fierce and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent, and will kill the dragon that is in the sea. Leviathan is the chaos creature of ancient imagery, and the point of naming it here is that the disorder the previous chapters described has an end.
1 In that day, Yahweh with his hard and great and strong sword will punish leviathan, the fleeing serpent, and leviathan, the twisted serpent; and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea. 2 In that day, sing to her, “A pleasant vineyard! 3 I, Yahweh, am its keeper. I will water it every moment. Lest anyone damage it, I will keep it night and day. 4 Wrath is not in me, but if I should find briers and thorns, I would do battle! I would march on them and I would burn them together. 5 Or else let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me. Let him make peace with me.” 6 In days to come, Jacob will take root. Israel will blossom and bud. They will fill the surface of the world with fruit. 7 Has he struck them as he struck those who struck them? Or are they killed like those who killed them were killed? 8 In measure, when you send them away, you contend with them. He has removed them with his rough blast in the day of the east wind. 9 Therefore by this the iniquity of Jacob will be forgiven, and this is all the fruit of taking away his sin: that he makes all the stones of the altar as chalk stones that are beaten in pieces, so that the Asherah poles and the incense altars shall rise no more. 10 For the fortified city is solitary, a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness. The calf will feed there, and there he will lie down, and consume its branches. 11 When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off. The women will come and set them on fire, for they are a people of no understanding. Therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them, and he who formed them will show them no favor. 12 It will happen in that day that Yahweh will thresh from the flowing stream of the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt; and you will be gathered one by one, children of Israel. 13 It will happen in that day that a great trumpet will be blown; and those who were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and those who were outcasts in the land of Egypt, shall come; and they will worship Yahweh in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).