Isaiah 17:1-14
1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
3 The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts.
4 And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
5 And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim.
6 Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel.
7 At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
8 And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images.a
9 In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of Israel: and there shall be desolation.
10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips:
11 In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heapb in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
12 Woe to the multitudec of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
13 The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
14 And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.
Isaiah 17:1. A ruinous heap. Tiglath-pileser destroyed it in the support of Ahaz, and carried away the inhabitants. 2 Kings 16:8. Yet it was afterwards rebuilt.
Isaiah 17:2. The cities of Aroer are forsaken. Aroer was a city on the banks of Arnon, near the dead sea, which belonged to the tribe of Gad. When Tiglath came up with his Chaldaic armies, he apparently divided them into two. The one burned Damascus, and then invaded Ephraim, or the ten tribes; and the southern army extended to Aroer in the land of Moab. This city, says Burckhardt, still subsists under the name of Araayr.
Isaiah 17:4. The glory of Jacob shall be made thin, indicating the reduction of the Hebrew population by civil and foreign wars. The Lord now began to cut Israel short.
Isaiah 17:9. “In that day, the cities shall be forsaken as when the Hivites and Amorites forsook them, because of the children of Israel.” Lowth.
REFLECTIONS.
King Ahaz sought help in an arm of flesh, which only helped for the present, and at an expense ruinous to his people, and eventually ruinous to all under the yoke of Babylon. Oh how much more blessed was Samuel, who in trouble called upon the Lord, and joyfully raised his Ebenezer in Mizpeh.
We see that God will punish the wicked, who help their neighbours through motives of wickedness. Woe to the multitude of many people, who make a noise like the roaring of the seas; that is, the Chaldeans, who boasted and blasphemed. We have seen the fall of their empire, as in Chapter s 13. and 14.
We learn also the low and distressed state of the Jews before their final overthrow: they were as a tree stripped of all its fruit, except some upper branches out of the reach of purloiners. The prophet Micah has a similar idea: woe is me, for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruit; yea, like the inferior fruit left for the poor to pick. If God be not with a man, or a nation, his glory shall fade like the verdure of the year.