What Does Isaiah 5:5 Mean?
Come, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be eaten up. I will break through its wall, and it shall be trampled.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:THE KEY
The word for breaking the wall also carries the motion of breaking through: the vineyard’s boundary is breached open.
THE MEANING
This speaks now wherever what is cultivated is left without its boundary, exposed to being consumed and trampled. The verse holds the consequence plainly: the crop is eaten, the wall is broken, and the vineyard is walked over.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what has been cultivated is therefore secure is undone here: care does not make the boundary invulnerable, and its removal exposes the vineyard to destruction.
THE ROOT
פָּרֹץ
parots
GROWS FROM
פרץ
to break through, breach, or burst out
“break through its wall” in this verse is parots. The same root can name a breach in a wall and a breaking forth or spreading outward. Here that boundary-breaking force opens the vineyard to exposure and trampling.
ALSO GROWS
parats: to break through or burst out
פָּרַץ
This verb form appears as “spread abroad” in Genesis 28:14, showing the root’s movement beyond a boundary.
perets: a breach or break
פֶּרֶץ
This noun names the opening made in a boundary, the condition the broken wall leaves behind.
לְמִרְמָס
lə-mirmas
GROWS FROM
רמס
to trample or tread down
“trodden down” in this verse is lə-mirmas. The noun pictures the vineyard as ground made available for trampling, not merely something touched by passing feet. The verse ends with the once-guarded vineyard reduced to that exposed surface.
ALSO GROWS
ramas: to trample
רָמַס
This is the verb at the root of the vineyard’s fate: it is placed underfoot.
tirmōs: you will trample
תִּרְמֹס
Psalm 91:13 uses this form for treading upon a lion; here the vineyard itself is the object beneath the feet.
THE PATTERN
A hedge gives cultivated life a boundary; when it is broken, what grew inside becomes exposed.
Why do you break through her hedges, and all who pass by the way pluck her?Have you not put a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock has burst forth in the land.Hear another parable. There was a man, master of a house, who planted a vineyard and fenced it round about, and dug a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to those who work the soil, and went away to a far country.THE THREAD
And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall burst forth to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the ground shall be blessed.The Hebrew root פרץ appears in both verses: Isaiah uses it for breaking the vineyard’s wall, while Genesis uses it for spreading abroad. The shared root holds the motion of breaking through a boundary; here, that breach leaves the vineyard exposed to trampling.
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