Isaiah 27:10

The defenced city shall be desolate... — The key to this prediction is found in Isaiah 25:2, where the same words occur. The “defenced city” is that of the strangers, who are the enemies of God’s people, and its destruction is contrasted with the restoration of the purified Jerusalem of the preceding verse. To see in the “defenced city” which is to be laid low Jerusalem itself is at variance with the natural sequence of thought. The picture of desolation — calves feeding in what had been the busy streets of a populous city — is analogous to that of the “wild beasts of the desert,” roaring among the ruins of Babylon, in Isaiah 13:21.