Isaiah 17

This is the message of judgment about Damascus. Look, Damascus will no longer be a city. It will become a pile of ruins.

1The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

Note"Burden" in the King James renders a Hebrew word (massa) used as a technical label for a prophetic pronouncement, usually one announcing doom against a nation; the same word elsewhere means a load carried on the back. Damascus was the capital of Aram (Syria), the kingdom immediately north-east of Israel. Around 735–732 BC Damascus and the northern kingdom of Israel were allied against Assyria, which is why the two are addressed together throughout this chapter.

2The cities of Aroer are left empty. They will be given over to flocks, which will lie down there with no one to frighten them.

2The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.

NoteThe location of Aroer here is uncertain. Two known towns of that name lie in Moab and Gilead, far south of Damascus, so some take the reference to be to otherwise unrecorded villages in Aramean territory; a few ancient versions read the line differently altogether ("forsaken for ever"). Flocks lying down undisturbed is a standing image for land emptied of people: pasture where houses used to be.

3The fortified city will be gone from Ephraim, and kingly rule will be gone from Damascus. What is left of Syria will be like the glory of the people of Israel, says the LORD of Armies.

3The 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.

Note"Ephraim" was the largest tribe of the northern kingdom of Israel, and its name is regularly used for that whole kingdom, as distinct from Judah in the south. "Syria" translates Aram, the Aramean kingdom centered on Damascus. "The LORD of hosts" (rendered "LORD of Armies") translates a title meaning commander of armies (either Israel's armies or the heavenly ones. LORD in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish tradition did not pronounce aloud. The last line is barbed: Syria's survivors will be as glorious as Israel's glory) which, as the next verse says, is about to fade to nothing.

4In that day the glory of Jacob will fade, and the fat on his body will waste away until he is thin.

4And 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.

Note"Jacob" is the ancestor whose twelve sons gave their names to the tribes, so his name is used for the nation descended from him, here the northern kingdom. Fat on the body is an ancient image of wealth and strength, not of overeating; the reverse, a body wasting thin, pictures a nation stripped of resources.

5It will be like a harvest worker gathering the standing grain and cutting off the heads of grain with his arm. It will be like someone picking up the leftover heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.

5And 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.

NoteThe Valley of Rephaim is a fertile plain just south-west of Jerusalem, known for its grain. Gleaning is the practice of going over a harvested field to pick up the stalks the reapers missed; Israelite law reserved these leftovers for the poor. The picture is of a field after the reapers have passed: almost nothing remains standing.

6Still, a few will be left, the way an olive tree looks after it has been beaten: two or three olives at the very top, four or five on the branches that bear fruit, says the LORD, the God of Israel.

6Yet 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.

NoteOlives were harvested by beating the branches with long poles, which left a few fruits clinging out of reach at the top and on the outer twigs. Those few were what the poor were entitled to collect. The numbers are deliberately small, a survival, but a meager one.

7In that day people will look to their Maker, and their eyes will turn to the Holy One of Israel.

7At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.

Note"The Holy One of Israel" is Isaiah's characteristic title for God, used far more in this book than anywhere else in the Hebrew scriptures. "Holy" here carries the sense of set apart and utterly other, not simply morally good.

8They will not look to the altars their own hands built. They will not turn to what their own fingers made, the Asherah poles or the incense altars.

8And 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.

NoteAsherah poles were wooden objects, carved poles or living trees, set up beside altars, associated with the goddess Asherah; the King James calls them "groves" because early translators took the Hebrew to mean a stand of trees. The other objects (King James "images") were probably incense stands or small pillars used in worship. The point of the wording is that the worshiper is looking at something he built himself.

9In that day their strong cities will be like a branch left behind and a treetop abandoned, places left empty because of the Israelites. The land will be a wasteland.

9In 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.

NoteThe Hebrew of this verse is difficult and ancient readers disagreed about it. The Hebrew text as preserved speaks of abandoned woodland and hilltops; the ancient Greek translation read instead "like the abandoned cities of the Amorites and the Hivites, which they abandoned before the Israelites": that is, the cities emptied when Israel first entered the land. The rendering keeps the Hebrew, but the comparison could be to either.

10This is because you have forgotten the God who saves you, and you have not kept in mind the rock where you find your strength. So you plant pleasant gardens and set out cuttings from foreign vines.

10Because 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:

Note"Rock" as a title for God is a standing metaphor for a place of refuge, a crag or cliff you retreat into when attacked, not a description of hardness. The "pleasant plants" and cuttings from foreign vines are imported stock planted in a carefully tended plot; many take this as a reference to a foreign fertility cult whose rites involved forcing plants to sprout quickly in shallow soil, but the words themselves describe ordinary horticulture, and the point is that the crop is not native.

11On the day you plant them you make them grow, and in the morning you make your seed sprout. But the harvest will be a ruined heap on a day of grief and of pain that cannot be healed.

11In 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 heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.

NoteThe picture is of plants that shoot up unnaturally fast, planted and sprouting the same day, and then yield nothing when harvest comes. "A heap" is the same word used of the ruined heap Damascus becomes in verse 1.

12Listen to the uproar of many peoples. They make a noise like the roaring of the seas. Listen to the nations rushing on, roaring like the rush of mighty waters.

12Woe to the multitude 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!

NoteThe Hebrew opens with a cry (hoy) that can be a shout of grief over the dead, a warning, or simply a call for attention, "Ah!" or "Listen!" The King James renders it "Woe," but here the speaker is not necessarily lamenting the nations' fate. Massed armies compared to the roar of the sea is a stock image for an invading horde.

13The nations rush on like the rush of many waters, but God will speak sharply against them, and they will run far away. They will be chased like dry husks blown over the hills by the wind, like tumbleweed driven before a windstorm.

13The 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.

NoteChaff is the light husk separated from grain by tossing the threshed crop into the wind on an exposed hilltop; it blows away and is worthless. The "rolling thing" is a dried thistle or similar plant that breaks loose and tumbles before a gale, what English calls tumbleweed. Both images are of something with no weight of its own, moved entirely by the wind.

14In the evening, sudden terror. Before morning comes, they are gone. This is what comes to those who plunder us, the share that falls to those who rob us.

14And 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.

Note"Portion" and "lot" are both terms from the division of land: the share a family received, and the drawing of lots by which those shares were assigned. Used figuratively, they mean the fate allotted to someone. The speaker shifts to "us" here, the prophet speaking for his own people against the invaders.