Paradise Restored

9
THE REJECTION OF ISRAEL
Reading the Bible in terms of the Paradise theme can deepen
our understanding of even the most familiar passages of Scripture.
Suddenly we can understand why Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5,
for example, describe the covenant people as “the Lord’s
vineyard.” As we have seen, this was a reminder of man’s original
state of communion with God in the Garden. It was also a
reminder that when God saves His people, He constitutes them
a renewed Garden (or Vineyard), and thus the Biblical writers
used the imagery of planting, trees, vines, and fruit again and
again to describe salvation in its various aspects (John 15 is a
well-known example). It is important to recognize also, however,
that Garden-imagery can be used to describe apostasy and
the Curse, for the very first breaking of the covenant took place
in the Garden. God had given Adam a commission to cultivate
and guard His “vineyard”; instead, Adam had rebelled against
the Landowner, and was cursed and cast out, forfeiting his inheritance.
This twin image of the vineyard, as the place of both
blessing and cursing, is an important concept in the Bible, and
became the setting for one of Jesus’ most striking parables, the
story of the Wicked Vinegrowers (Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5 should
be read along with this).
There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a
hedge around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. He then
leased it to vinegrowers and went into a far country. Now when
harvest time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinegrowers,
that they might receive its fruit. But the vinegrowers took his servants,
beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Again he sent
other servants, more than the first, and they did the same thing
to them. The last of all he sent his son to them, saying, “They
will respect my son.” But when the vinegrowers saw the son, they
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