Discovery BoxIsaiah 5:2 
Context5:2 He built a hedge around it, 1 removed its stones,
and planted a vine.
He built a tower in the middle of it,
and constructed a winepress.
He waited for it to produce edible grapes,
but it produced sour ones instead. 2
Isaiah 34:4
Context34:4 All the stars in the sky will fade away, 3
the sky will roll up like a scroll;
all its stars will wither,
like a leaf withers and falls from a vine
or a fig withers and falls from a tree. 4
1 tn Or, “dug it up” (so NIV); KJV “fenced it.’ See HALOT 810 s.v. עזק.
2 tn Heb “wild grapes,” i.e., sour ones (also in v. 4).
sn At this point the love song turns sour as the Lord himself breaks in and completes the story (see vv. 3-6). In the final line of v. 2 the love song presented to the Lord becomes a judgment speech by the Lord.
3 tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa inserts “and the valleys will be split open,” but this reading may be influenced by Mic 1:4. On the other hand, the statement, if original, could have been omitted by homoioarcton, a scribe’s eye jumping from the conjunction prefixed to “the valleys” to the conjunction prefixed to the verb “rot.”
4 tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”
