Thematic Bible: Hedges


Thematic Bible



“A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
A rock garden locked, a spring sealed up.

And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth;
He has destroyed His appointed meeting place.
The Lord has caused to be forgotten
The appointed feast and sabbath in Zion,
And He has despised king and priest
In the indignation of His anger.


He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;
He has made my chain heavy.

“Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.


I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.

You have not gone up into the breaches, nor did you build the wall around the house of Israel to stand in the battle on the day of the Lord.


“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.

He dug it all around, removed its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
And He built a tower in the middle of it
And also hewed out a wine vat in it;
Then He expected it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.


“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.

And He began to speak to them in parables: A man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the wine press and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.


“So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard:
I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed;
I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground.

Why have You broken down its hedges,
So that all who pass that way pick its fruit?


“Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
And whom God has hedged in?

“He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
And He has put darkness on my paths.


He who digs a pit may fall into it, and a serpent may bite him who breaks through a wall.


These were the potters and the inhabitants of Netaim and Gederah; they lived there with the king for his work.


The way of the lazy is as a hedge of thorns,
But the path of the upright is a highway.


The way of the lazy is as a hedge of thorns,
But the path of the upright is a highway.


Why have You broken down its hedges, So that all who pass that way pick its fruit? A boar from the forest eats it away And whatever moves in the field feeds on it.


“Wail, O Heshbon, for Ai has been destroyed!
Cry out, O daughters of Rabbah,
Gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament,
And rush back and forth inside the walls;
For Malcam will go into exile
Together with his priests and his princes.


And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.


Your guardsmen are like the swarming locust.
Your marshals are like hordes of grasshoppers
Settling in the stone walls on a cold day.
The sun rises and they flee,
And the place where they are is not known.


He dug it all around, removed its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
And He built a tower in the middle of it
And also hewed out a wine vat in it;
Then He expected it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.


The best of them is like a briar,
The most upright like a thorn hedge.
The day when you post your watchmen,
Your punishment will come.
Then their confusion will occur.


Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.


He who digs a pit may fall into it, and a serpent may bite him who breaks through a wall.