Isaiah 5:8–17

The Lord Judges His Vineyard

⁸How terrible it will be for you who get too many houses!

How terrible for you who get too many fields!

Finally there won’t be any space left in the land.

Then you will live all alone.

⁹I heard the Lord who rules over all announce a message. He said,

“You can be sure that the great houses will become empty.

The fine homes will be left with no one living in them.

¹⁰A ten-acre vineyard will produce only six gallons of wine.

Six bushels of seeds will produce less than a bushel of grain.”

¹¹How terrible it will be for those who get up early in the morning

to start drinking!

How terrible for those who stay up late at night

until they are drunk with wine!

¹²They have harps and lyres at their big dinners.

They have tambourines, flutes and wine.

But they don’t have any concern for the mighty acts of the Lord.

They don’t have any respect for what his powerful hands have done.

¹³So my people will be taken away as prisoners.

That’s because they don’t understand what the Lord has done.

Their government leaders will die of hunger.

The rest of the people won’t have any water to drink.

¹⁴So the grave is hungry to receive them.

Its mouth is open wide to swallow them up.

Their nobles and the rest of the people will go down into it.

They will go there together with all those who have wild parties.

¹⁵So man will be brought low.

People will be put to shame.

Those who brag will be brought down.

¹⁶But the Lord who rules over all will be honored

because he judges fairly.

The holy God will show that he is holy

by doing what is right.

¹⁷Then sheep will graze as if they were in their own grasslands.

Lambs will eat grass among the destroyed buildings

where rich people used to live.