Isaiah 17

Isaiah announces judgment on Damascus, capital of Aram (Syria), and on Ephraim, the northern kingdom of Israel, which had allied with it. Their pride and their forgetting of God bring a thin harvest of ruin. Yet a remnant will turn back to their Maker, and the roaring nations that plunder God’s people will be blown away like chaff.

Isaiah 17:1

The word of judgment opens against Damascus, the great city of Aram. Once strong and proud, it will be a heap of ruins. God speaks about nations as well as individuals, and no city’s power is beyond his reach.

BSA: burden (“message from God, prophecy”): A burden is a weighty word from God, heavy with judgment, that the prophet must carry and deliver.

Hebrew: מַשָּׂא (massa, H4853) — “burden, load, oracle.” The word comes from lifting a load. A prophecy of judgment is something heavy that the prophet carries and sets down on a nation.

See also: Isaiah 13:1.

Isaiah 17:2

Even the towns of Aroer will be empty, and flocks will rest where people once lived. The picture is complete reversal: busy settlements become pasture with nobody left to scare the animals away.

BSA: forsaken (“abandoned, left to decay”): The towns are not only emptied but left to fall apart with no one caring for them.

Isaiah 17:3

Ephraim, the northern kingdom of Israel, had leaned on Damascus for protection. When Damascus falls, Ephraim’s fortresses fall too. Aram’s survivors will share the same lost glory as Israel, since both trusted human strength.

BSA: remnant (“what is left after a disaster or judgment”): Only a small leftover remains, and for Aram that leftover has no more honor than Israel’s. fortress (“strong tower, fortified city”): The strongholds Ephraim trusted in will vanish.

See also: Isaiah 7:1-9.

Isaiah 17:4

Jacob here stands for the northern kingdom. Its glory and prosperity will fade like a body wasting away. A people once well fed and confident will become thin and weak under God’s hand.

BSA: fat (“richness, abundance”): The nation’s wealth and fullness are pictured as bodily fatness that will melt away.

Isaiah 17:5

The judgment is pictured as a harvest. The reaper grips the grain and cuts it down, leaving little. The Valley of Rephaim, near Jerusalem, was known as good grain land, so the image is of a field stripped bare.

BSA: gleans (“picks up, gathers”): Gleaning is picking up the scraps after the main harvest is taken.

Isaiah 17:6

A few olives always remain on a tree after it is beaten. So a small remnant will survive the judgment. God’s discipline is severe, but it does not end in total destruction.

BSA: beaten (“shaken violently, beaten”): The tree is shaken hard to knock the fruit down, as Israel will be shaken.

See also: Isaiah 6:13; Isaiah 24:13.

Isaiah 17:7

After the shaking, the survivors will lift their eyes to their Maker. Hardship breaks their trust in what they built and turns them back to the One who made them. He is also the Holy One of Israel.

BSA: look (“gaze intently, turn their eyes”): This is a steady, earnest looking in dependence, not a passing glance. Maker (“Creator, the One who forms and shapes”): They return to the One who shaped them, not to things they shaped themselves.

See also: Isaiah 10:20-22.

Isaiah 17:8

They will turn from idols. The altars, Asherah poles and incense stands were made by human hands and fingers. Seeing that these cannot save, the people will finally stop looking to what they themselves have made.

BSA: fingers (“by their own strength”): The phrase stresses how foolish it is to worship what one has made. Asherahs (“idolatrous poles, goddess worship”): These were wooden symbols tied to the worship of a Canaanite goddess.

See also: Isaiah 2:8.

Isaiah 17:9

Their strong cities will be left empty, like abandoned thickets and hilltops. The idea seems to be of places left behind when earlier peoples fled before Israel. Now Israel suffers the same fate. Walls cannot protect people who have turned from God.

BSA: strong (“secure, fortified”): These cities looked safe, which makes their emptiness more striking.

Isaiah 17:10

Here is the root cause. They forgot the God who had saved them and been their Rock. Forgetting is more than a lapse of memory. It is living as though he were not there. So their careful gardening will bring them nothing.

BSA: Rock (“a fortified place, stronghold”): God is their secure hiding place, which they ignored while building their own defenses. forgotten (“mislayed, been oblivious to”): They simply put God out of mind and carried on.

Hebrew: שָׁכַחַתְּ (shakhakht, H7911) — “you have forgotten.” In the Bible, forgetting God means more than failing to recall him. It means ceasing to trust and obey him.

See also: Deuteronomy 32:18; Psalm 62:7.

Isaiah 17:11

They plant foreign vines and work hard to speed the growth, even making them sprout by morning. But the harvest will vanish in a day of sickness and pain with no cure. Great effort cannot rescue a life built without God.

BSA: incurable (“desperate, hopeless”): The sorrow that comes is beyond any human remedy.

Isaiah 17:12

The scene shifts to the nations that threaten God’s people. Their armies sound like the roar of the sea, loud and endless. It is a cry of woe, because their power looks overwhelming to those facing it.

BSA: tumult (“uproar, chaotic noise”): The enemy’s noise is like a great sea in storm. roaring (“crashing, tumultuous”): The waves are loud and unstoppable.

See also: Psalm 46:2-3.

Isaiah 17:13

The raging seas meet one rebuke from God, and they run. They are blown away like chaff on the threshing hills or tumbleweeds in a gale. What looked like a great flood has no strength before him.

BSA: rebukes (“God, the Almighty”): The gloss reminds us the one who rebukes is God himself, whose word alone is enough. chaff (“the loose, worthless outer covering of grain”): The enemy’s might proves light and worthless.

See also: Psalm 1:4; Psalm 18:15.

Isaiah 17:14

In the evening comes sudden terror, and by morning the attackers are gone. This is the fate of those who plunder God’s people. The chapter ends with comfort: God’s people are not left to the mercy of their enemies.

BSA: terror (“fear, dread, destruction”): The word suggests real ruin, not only fright. lot (“assigned, destined”): This is the destiny set for those who plunder, as if it were handed to them.

See also: Isaiah 37:36.