What Does Isaiah 5:4 Mean in the King James?
What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The vineyard does not yield nothing; it yields foul fruit, despite receiving all the care that could be given.
THE MEANING
The verse holds open the painful gap between care received and what grows from it. The expected grapes are replaced by foul fruit, and the question of what more could have been done remains sharp. This is a living question about the distance between what is hoped for and what actually appears.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that every foul outcome proves there was not enough care; here, the speaker says the vineyard has received all that could be done.
THE ROOT
בְּאֻשִׁים
be'ushim
GROWS FROM
באש
ba'ash
To stink or become foul.
“wild grapes” in this verse is be'ushim. The word for the unexpected fruit carries the sense of something foul, not merely something untamed. The harvest is present, but its character is unmistakably wrong for the vineyard’s expectation.
ALSO GROWS
ba'ash: To stink or become foul.
בָּאַשׁ
The verb reveals the force inside “wild grapes”: the fruit is marked by foulness, not simple absence.
be'osh: A stench or foul thing.
בְּאֹשׁ
This noun makes the sensory quality of the yield explicit: what grows gives off the sign of decay.
קִוֵּיתִי
qivveti
GROWS FROM
קוה
qavah
To wait for, hope for, or expect.
The verb translated “looked” names expectation held over time, and the same root gives Hebrew תִּקְוָה (tiqvah), “hope.” The pain is not a passing glance at the crop but an expectation that meets a real harvest, and finds it foul.
ALSO GROWS
tiqvah: Hope or expectation.
תִּקְוָה
The vineyard’s expected grapes belong to the same word family as hope, making the failed yield a broken expectation.
miqveh: A gathering or collected pool of water.
מִקְוֶה
This branch carries the sense of gathering; the vineyard’s expectation is for a gathered fruitfulness, but its yield has a different character.
THE PATTERN
The fruit a living thing produces reveals what is taking shape within it.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.THE THREAD
I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.Isaiah’s verb for expectation shares the root קוה (qavah, “wait or hope”) with the psalm’s “I wait.” The psalm shows this expectation directed toward the LORD; Isaiah lets us feel its ache when what is awaited appears as foul fruit.
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