Love, Marriage, and a Delayed Harvest: Isaiah 61 as the Reversal of the Song of the Vineyard (5:1–7)

Abstract

Abstract In the book of Isaiah, the “Song of the Vineyard” (5:1–7) merges garden imagery and love-song language together in a distinctive way. In Isa 61, garden imagery and marital language appear side by side, and the concluding hymn (vv. 10–11) sets the two images in explicit parallel. I argue that the imagery in Isa 61 is a reversing echo of the imagery of Isa 5:1–7 and communicates a message of restoration in keeping with the rest of Isa 60–62. By reversing the imagery of Isa 5:1–7, the author of Isa 61 depicts the fulfillment of the hopes that horticultural and relational destruction will not be the end of the story of God’s people. Recognizing that Isa 61 contains an intentional echo of Isa 5:1–7 lends support to compositional models for Isaiah that view the authorship of the final section(s) of the book as being a conscious development of an existing Isaianic corpus.