Isaiahchapter 17
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Speaks with:Deuteronomy 32×2Isaiah 24×2Isaiah 27×2Amos 1×1Zechariah 9×1Isaiah 25×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Damascus is taken away from being a city and becomes a ruinous heap, but this burden binds Syria and northern Israel together: the fortress ceases from Ephraim as the kingdom ceases from Damascus, and the glory of Jacob is made thin. Harvest images carry the judgment: a reaper in the valley of Rephaim, an olive tree shaken until only two or three berries remain in the top boughs. In that day men look to their Maker, the Holy One of Israel, and away from altars, Asherim, and sun-images their own fingers made, for Israel has forgotten the God of its salvation and planted pleasant plants whose harvest flees in the day of grief. The chapter closes with roaring nations rushing like mighty waters, rebuked and chased like chaff: terror at eventide, gone before morning.
Context
Prophecy · Isaiah — Isaiah overview
- A. 1–6 Damascus a Ruinous Heap, with Gleanings Left
- B. 7–11 In That Day a Man Shall Look to His Maker
- C. 12–14 The Roar of Many Peoples Rebuked at Eventide
The outline
A.Damascus a Ruinous Heap, with Gleanings Leftvv. 1 to 6
Read vv. 1 to 6 →B.In That Day a Man Shall Look to His Makervv. 7 to 11
Read vv. 7 to 11 →C.The Roar of Many Peoples Rebuked at Eventidevv. 12 to 14
Read vv. 12 to 14 →
The world behind this chapter
Isaiah 17The history
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.
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.
What it meant to them
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.
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.
Sources cited
- The Annals of Tiglath-pileser III (Nimrud inscriptions)
- Walton, Matthews & Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Isaiah 17. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.