Isaiahchapter 17
14 verses · Isaiah · 8th century BC · The Prophets
Alas, the tumult of many peoples; they rage like the roaring seas and clamoring nations; they rumble like the crashing of mighty waters.
Introduction
Isaiah, The Prophets, Isaiah Overview.
Isaiah addresses Damascus, the capital of Aram, and in the same breath the northern kingdom of Israel that had joined it. The two had threatened Judah together in the days of King Ahaz, and Judah had feared them. The chapter was spoken before Assyria took Damascus in 732 BC. Its pictures come from the farm year, the grain harvest and the olive harvest, which every hearer had worked. Listen for the turn from the idols men make with their own hands to the Maker they forgot. The chapter ends with a sound heard at night and gone by morning.
Context
- Who
- Judeans watching the coalition that had threatened them come apart
- What
- An oracle announcing the ruin of Damascus and of the northern kingdom allied with it, closing with the sudden rout of the nations.
- Where
- Damascus and its oasis, the cities of Ephraim, and the grain fields of the Valley of Rephaim near Jerusalem.
- When
- Before 732 BC, when Tiglath-pileser III took Damascus, though the closing verses fit the Assyrian advance of 701 BC.
- Why
- To show Judah that the alliance it feared would come apart, and that Israel's fall came from forgetting the God of its salvation.
Historical context
Damascus was one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, sitting in a green oasis fed by the rivers off Mount Hermon, and it had been Israel's most dangerous neighbor for two centuries. In 732 BC Tiglath-pileser III took it, killed King Rezin, and deported the population; the campaign is recorded in his own inscriptions. The oracle is spoken before that, when Damascus and Ephraim were still standing together against Judah.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
The judgment on Israel is given as a harvest. The reaper gathers the standing grain and cuts the ears with his arm, the harvester grabbed a handful, cut it, and moved on, and whatever fell was left. Israel's law reserved those leavings for the poor to glean, so the picture is of a nation reduced to gleanings.
Then the olive picture. Olives were harvested by beating the branches with poles, and no matter how carefully you worked, a few berries stayed out at the top of the tree and two or three on the outermost boughs. That is the size of the remnant Isaiah describes: what a man cannot reach.
The strangest detail is a real cult. Isaiah describes people planting pleasant plants and setting slips of a foreign vine, making them grow the very morning they are planted, quick-sprouting pots forced into life for a fertility rite, a practice known around the Mediterranean and mocked here because the harvest from it is a heap of grief. Set beside it is the honest verdict: you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the rock of your strength.
Significance
The two nations Judah feared most in Ahaz's day are dismantled in one short oracle, and the hearers are shown why they never had to make the deal they were pressured into making.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The closing lines are the sound of an empire arriving, the rushing of many waters, and then the sound of it leaving: God rebukes it, and it flees like chaff on the mountains before the wind, like a tumbleweed before a storm. At evening, terror. Before morning, gone. That is exactly what would happen outside Jerusalem in 701 BC.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
No part of this chapter is read in the synagogue. Probed for this lane, the site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot 0 and haftarah uses 0 for Isaiah 17, and no festival reading for the book. Across chapters 1 to 22 of Isaiah the same probe found a Haftarah only in chapters 1, 6, 7 and 9.
How it is read
Rashi is the main commentator on this chapter in the corpus, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. Ibn Ezra is quoted from the Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah, translated by M. Friedlander in 1873, which Sefaria reports as Public Domain.
The oracle on Damascus is read with Samaria beside it. Ibn Ezra writes that when Sennacherib came, "Damascus had been already conquered and also Samaria with its fortresses" (Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 17:3:1). Rashi reads the glory of Jacob made thin through Jonathan's Targum: "And the wealth of his glory shall be exiled" (Rashi on Isaiah 17:4:1).
The gleanings left in the olive tree are "Hezekiah and his company, who are inside Jerusalem" (Rashi on Isaiah 17:6:1). The man who turns to his Maker is read of "the righteous men remaining among them" (Rashi on Isaiah 17:7:2).
Rashi reads the pleasant planting of the tenth verse as the twelve sons of Jacob (Rashi on Isaiah 17:10:1). The roaring of the nations at the chapter's end yields a rule: "the scourge by which Israel is punished, shall eventually suffer" (Rashi on Isaiah 17:12:1).
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries 39 rabbinic locators on the verses of this chapter, 2 in the Talmud and 37 in the Midrash. It carries the text of none, so each is cited by ref here and never quoted or paraphrased. The verse numbers are the Hebrew ones the corpus prints.
On verse 1 it holds Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 10, Esther Rabbah 3:4 and Midrash Tanchuma, Sh'lach 12:1. It also holds Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:6:1. On verse 4 it holds Midrash Lekach Tov, Deuteronomy 33:25:1 and Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 27:39:3. On verse 6 it holds Eikhah Rabbah 4:15, Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 30 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:35. It also holds Jerusalem Talmud Peah 7:3:6, Midrash Lekach Tov, Deuteronomy 26:17:1 and Midrash Tehillim 79:1. It also holds Otzar Midrashim, Midrash on the Ten Kings 1:9 and Sanhedrin 95b:13. On verse 7 it holds Midrash Lekach Tov, Exodus 5:9:2, Midrash Tanchuma, Bechukotai 4:1 and Pesikta Rabbati 12:1. On verse 11 it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 16:20, Bamidbar Rabbah 7:4 and Bamidbar Rabbah 7:5. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Sh'lach 21:1, Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 23:12 and Vayikra Rabbah 18:3. It also holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 743:14.
On verse 12 it holds Aggadat Bereshit 10:1, Aggadat Bereshit 73:2 and Aggadat Bereshit 84:3. It also holds Bamidbar Rabbah 2:16, Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Bereshit 11 and Eikhah Rabbah 3:18. It also holds Midrash Aggadah, Exodus 30:11:1, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Ki Tisa 3:2 and Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 4:3. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma, Shoftim 16:1, Midrash Tehillim 15:3 and Midrash Tehillim 17:8. On verse 13 it holds Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:1:3. On verse 14 it holds Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 30:7:13 and Sifrei Aggadah on Esther, Midrash Panim Acherim, Version II 6:2.
The corpus file also carries one locator anchored to a verse this chapter does not have, and it is left out of the list above. Eikhah Rabbah 2:1 is anchored at Isaiah 17:19. The chapter has 14 verses in the Berean Standard Bible as the store holds it.
What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Isaiah 17:1:1 to 17:14:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 17:2:1 to 17:8:1, Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah - trans. by M. Friedlander, 1873, reported Public Domain; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/isaiah/17.json, the 39 Talmud and Midrash locators on the verses of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for Isaiah 17: parashot 0, haftarah uses 0, and no festival reading for the book.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Damascus a Ruinous Heap, with Gleanings Left
Isaiah 17:1-3
This is the burden against Damascus: The burden against Damascus folds a second nation into the oracle: Damascus becomes "a heap of ruins," and its towns are left to the flocks. The fortress disappears from Ephraim, because the northern kingdom had bound itself to Syria in the alliance against Judah that 2 Kings 16:5 records.
Isaiah 17:1
“The burden of Damascus - The oracle indicating calamity or destruction to Damascus (see the note at Isa 13:1). “Damascus is taken away.” That is, it shall be destroyed. It was represented to the prophet in vision as destroyed (see the note at Isa 1:1). And it shall be a ruinous heap - See Isa 35:2. This took place under the kings of Assyria, and particularly under Tiglath-pileser. This was in the fourth year of Ahaz 2Ki 16:9.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Isaiah 17:1
“Damascus--put before Israel (Ephraim, Isa 17:3), which is chiefly referred to in what follows, because it was the prevailing power in the league; with it Ephraim either stood or fell (Isa 7:1-25).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The cities of Aroer are forsaken: Aroer puzzles the commentators, for the best-known city of that name stood on the Arnon, far to the south. Calvin and Barnes read it as a region of Damascus. Henry judges the forsaken cities better left to flocks than to the rebels who lived there.
Isaiah 17:2
“The cities of Aroer are forsaken “The cities are deserted for ever” - What has Aroer on the river Arnon to do with Damascus? and if there be another Aroer on the northern border of the tribe of Gad, as Reland seems to think there might be, this is not much more to the purpose. Besides, the cities of Aroer, if Aroer itself is a city, makes no good sense. The Septuagint, for ערער aroer, read עדי עד adey ad, εις τον αιωνα, for ever, or for a long duration.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 17:2
“The cities of Aroer are forsaken. It is not probable that Aroer here denotes the city which is mentioned elsewhere, (Numbers 32:34; Deuteronomy 2:36, 3:12, 4:48;) but it is rather the name of a country.”
John Calvin · Commentaries (1554)reformed
The fortress will disappear from Ephraim: Gill takes the fortress as Samaria, the capital of the ten tribes. The remnant of Aram is what Tiglath-pileser III left after taking Damascus, recorded in 2 Kings 16:9. Aram's splendor will fare as Israel's, which verse 4 says will fade.
Isaiah 17:3
“The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim,.... The ten tribes, now in confederacy with the Syrians, whose metropolis or fortress was Samaria, which seems to be intended here; and should be destroyed, at least taken out of the hands of the Israelites, and they be carried captive by Shalmaneser king of Assyria, 2Ki 17:6 and this may be understood, not of that particular city and fortress only, but of all their strongholds, the singular being, put for the plural.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 17:3
“The fortress - The strong place of defense; the fortified place. Shall cease - Shall come to an end; shall cease to be, for so the word שׁבת shâbath is often used, Gen 8:22; Isa 24:8; Lam 5:15. From Ephraim - The name given to the kingdom of Israel, or to the ten tribes, because Ephraim was the largest of the ten, and was a leading tribe in their councils (see the note at Isa 7:2).”
Isaiah 17:4-6
the splendor of Jacob will fade: Jacob's splendor fades and the figure turns at once to harvest. Yet gleanings remain, "two or three berries atop the tree, four or five on its fruitful branches," the remnant figure Isaiah keeps returning to. Gill and Delitzsch note that the deliberate smallness of the count names a remnant preserved.
Isaiah 17:4
“In that day - That is, says Kimchi, the time when the ten tribes of Israel, which were the glory of Jacob, should be carried into captivity.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
as the reaper gathers the standing grain: Clarke names the reaper as the king of Assyria, who strips the land of its people as a harvester strips a field. Henry adds that Israel had ripened itself for this harvest by its sins. Only stray ears remain for the gleaner.
Isaiah 17:5
“And it shall be ... - This is the other figure by which the prophet sets forth the calamities that were coming upon Ephraim - an image designed to denote the fact that the inhabitants and wealth of the land would be collected and removed, as the farmer gathers his harvest, and leaves only that which is inaccessible in the upper boughs of the tree, or the gleanings in the field.”
Yet gleanings will remain: Barnes notes that the olives left on the highest and farthest branches are the poorest, too hard to reach. Deuteronomy 24:20 left such gleanings for the widow and the fatherless. The few poor left in Israel are that remnant.
Isaiah 17:6
“Commentary on Chapter XVII 1. Damascus - Both of that city and kingdom. A heap - This was fulfilled by Tiglath-pilneser, 2 Kings xvi, 9, although afterwards it was re-edified.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
In That Day a Man Shall Look to His Maker
Isaiah 17:7-9
men will look to their Maker: The judgment turns the survivors' eyes "to the Holy One of Israel," the title Isaiah carries through the whole book. They will no longer look to the altars, Asherahs and incense altars their own hands made. Verse 9 leaves their strong cities "like forsaken thickets and summits."
Isaiah 17:7
“At that day shall a man look to his Maker - Instead of confiding in their strongly fortified places and armies, they shall look for aid and protection to the God that made them, and who alone can help them. National afflictions and judgments often have the effect to turn the eyes of even a wicked and rebellious people to God. They feel their danger; they are convinced of their guilt; they see that no one but God can protect them; and for a time they are willing, even by humiliation and fasting, to seek the divine protection.”
the altars they have fashioned with their hands: Barnes links these altars with the foreign altars set up by Israel's kings and by Ahaz, who copied one he saw at Damascus. The Asherahs were wooden poles for the goddess Asherah. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown connect them with the sacred tree of the Assyrian inscriptions.
Isaiah 17:8
“The altars, the work of his hands “The altars dedicated to the work of his hands” - The construction of the words, and the meaning of the sentence, in this place are not obvious; all the ancient Versions, and most of the modern, have mistaken it. The word מעשה maaseh, “the work,” stands in regimine with מזבחות mizbechoth, “altars,” not in opposition to it; it means the, altars of the work of their hand; that is of the idols, which are the work of their hands. Thus Kimchi has explained it, and Le Clerc has followed him.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
In that day their strong cities: Wesley and Henry read the abandoned cities as those the Canaanites left when Israel came in under Joshua. Israel now flees before Assyria. Clarke follows the Septuagint, which names the Hivites and the Amorites here.
Isaiah 17:9
“His strong cities - The cities of the united kingdoms of Damascus and Samaria. Be as a forsaken bough - There has been much difficulty in the interpretation of this passage. Lowth says, ‘No one has ever been able to make any tolerable sense of these words;’ and proposes himself the translation, In that day shall his strongly fenced cities become Like the desertion of the Hivites and the Amorites; Following in this the translation of the Septuagint, but doing violence to the Hebrew text.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 17:9
“Left - Which they (the Canaanites) left or forsook because of (or for fear of) the children of Israel. And this was a fit example, to awaken the Israelites to a serious belief of this threatening, because God had inflicted the same judgment upon the Canaanites, for the same sins of which they were guilty.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Isaiah 17:10-11
you have forgotten the God: The charge is named, "you have forgotten the God of your salvation and failed to remember the Rock of your refuge," and the judgment follows. What sprouts overnight vanishes "on the day of disease and incurable pain," the fast growth and fast collapse bound in one image.
Isaiah 17:10
“Strange slips “Shoots from a foreign soil” - The pleasant plants, and shoots from a foreign soil, are allegorical expressions for strange and idolatrous worship; vicious and abominable practices connected with it; reliance on human aid, and on alliances entered into with the neighboring nations, especially Egypt; to all which the Israelites were greatly addicted, and in their expectations from which they should be grievously disappointed.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
though on the day you plant you make them grow: On that morning means at once, sprouting the day it is planted, and the King James renders the same Hebrew early in Psalm 90:14. Barnes stresses the care poured into the plant and the seed. The harvest of those foreign vines of verse 10 still vanishes.
Isaiah 17:11
“As soon as thou plantest, it grows. in the morning--that is, immediately after; so in Ps 90:14, the Hebrew, "in the morning," is translated "early." but . . . shall be a heap--rather, "but (promising as was the prospect) the harvest is gone" [HORSLEY]. in . . . day of grief--rather, "in the day of (expected) possession" [MAURER].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The Roar of Many Peoples Rebuked at Eventide
Isaiah 17:12-14
Alas, the tumult of many peoples: The oracle widens from Damascus and Ephraim to every nation. He rebukes them and they flee, with sudden terror in the evening and by morning they are no more. Henry and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown set beside it Sennacherib's later siege, an army gone between nightfall and dawn.
Isaiah 17:12
“Woe to the multitude of many people,..... Not as lamenting the people of the Jews with Hezekiah, as if they were the words of the prophet bemoaning their condition, saying, "O the multitude", &c. nor intending the Syrians and Israelites joined together against Judah; but the Assyrian army under Sennacherib, which consisted of people of many nations, and was very numerous, who are either threatened or called unto.”
2 more voices on this verse
Isaiah 17:12
“Wo to the multitude - The three last verses of this chapter seem to have no relation to the foregoing prophecy, to which they are joined. It is a beautiful piece, standing singly and by itself; for neither has it any connection with what follows: whether it stands in its right place, or not, I cannot say. It is a noble description of the formidable invasion and the sudden overthrow of Sennacherib; which is intimated in the strongest terms and the most expressive images, exactly suitable to the event.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Isaiah 17:12
“Woe - This is a new prophecy, added for the comfort of God's people. Many - Combined together against Judah. Seas - Who invade my land and people with great force, as the sea does when it enters into the land by a breach.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The nations rage like the rush of many waters: Threshing floors stood in the open on high hills to catch the wind, and the chaff flew from them. Gill sets the rushing waters beside Isaiah 8:7, where the Assyrian army sweeps the land up to Jerusalem. Barnes supplies God as the One who rebukes.
Isaiah 17:13
“God shall rebuke them - The word ‘God’ is not here in the original, but is evidently to be supplied. The word ‘rebuke’ means that he would disarrange their plans, prevent their success, and defeat their purposes. It shows the great power of God, that he can thus by a “rebuke” - a word - arrest mighty nations, and discomfit thom when they are tumultuously hastening onward in the confidence of victory. This discomfiture refers, doubtless, to the overthrow of Sennacherib and his army by the pestilence (2Ki 19:35; see the notes at Isa 37:36).”
In the evening, there is sudden terror!: The prophet speaks as one of the plundered, and Jerome notes that he joins himself to his own nation. Portion and lot are the words for an inheritance, and the plunderers inherit ruin. Psalm 30:5 makes the same turn from night to morning.
Isaiah 17:14
“He is not “He is no more” - For איננו einennu ten MSS. of Dr. Kennicott’s, (three ancient), ten of De Rossi’s, and two editions, and the Septuagint, Syriac, Chaldee, Vulgate, and Arabic, have ואיננו veeinenno. This particle, authenticated by so many good vouchers, restores the sentence to its true poetical form, implying a repetition of some part of the parallel line preceding, thus: - “At the season of evening, behold terror!”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.