The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Isaiah 17
1 The burden of Damascus.
“Behold, Damascus is taken away from
being a city, and it will be a ruinous heap.
2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken. They
will be forflocks, which shall lie down, and
no one shall make them afraid.
3 The fortress shall cease from Ephraim,
and the kingdom from Damascus, and the
remnant of Syria. They will be as the glory
of the children of Israel,” says Yahweh of
Armies.
4 “It will happen in that day thatthe glory
of Jacob will be made thin, and the fatness
of his flesh will become lean.
5 It will be like when the harvester gathers the wheat,
and his arm reaps the grain. Yes, it will be like when one gleans grain in
the valley of Rephaim.
6 Yet gleanings will be left there, like the
shaking of an olive tree, two or three olives
in the top of the uppermost bough, four or
five in the outermost branches of a fruitful
tree,” says Yahweh, the God of Israel.
7 In that day, people will look to their
Maker, and their eyes will have respect for
the Holy One of Israel.
8 They will not look to the altars, the
work of their hands; neither shall they respect that
which their fingers have made, either the Asherah
poles or the incense altars.
9 In that day, their strong cities will be
like the forsaken places in the woods and
on the mountain top, which were forsaken
from before the children of Israel; and it
will be a desolation.
10 For you have forgotten the God of
your salvation, and have not remembered
the rock of your strength. Therefore you
plant pleasant plants, and set out foreign
seedlings.
11 In the day of your planting, you hedge
it in. In the morning, you make your seed
blossom, but the harvest flees away in the
day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples who
roar like the roaring of the seas; and the
rushing of nations that rush like the rushing of mighty waters!
13 The nations will rush like the rushing
of many waters, but he will rebuke them,
and they willflee far off, and will be chased
like the chaff of the mountains before the
wind, and like the whirling dust before the
storm.
14 At evening, behold, terror! Before the
morning, they are no more. This is the
portion of those who plunder us, and the
lot of those who rob us.