Isaiah 17:1

Note the following lines from Coleridge;

The Owlet

Sailing with obscene wings athwart the noon,

(He) drops his blue-fringed lids and holds them close,

And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven

Cries out, Where is it?[1]

The comments of critical scholars inevitably bring to mind these words of Coleridge! We refer to such as this: "Chapter 17 is made up of fragmentary oracles having little apparent relationship to one another!"[2] On the other hand there is an obvious vital connection in the four parts of this chapter. In the first part (Isaiah 17:1-6), Damascus is addressed as the principal theme; but Damascus has a partner, Ephraim, a rebellious portion of God's people; and, as is always the case when God's people unite with pagans and unbelievers, Ephraim is no longer God's in the full sense of the word, but holds the secondary status as an ally of Syria (Damascus). Thus his doom is announced in the same verses with that of Damascus with the added indignity of being in second place all the way through the prophecy.

The second part of the chapter (Isaiah 17:7-8) points out the consequence of Ephraim's forsaking God and their subsequent devastation and debilitation, that they will, at least in some small degree, restore the true worship and turn away from their false worship of pagan gods.

The third division (Isaiah 17:9-11) has instruction regarding the futility of idolatry, and also further information regarding the worship of false gods by Judah. Note how logically this follows in sequence with what has already been stated through Isaiah in the first two paragraphs.

The fourth and final division of the chapter, as is so frequently noted in Scripture, holds out the assurance that those who are inflicting all of the damage upon God's people will themselves perish "between evening and morning," that is, in a single night. Isaiah 17:12-14 are universally admitted, even by critical scholars, to be a perfect description of what happened to Sennacherib in his siege of Jerusalem (about 701-702 B.C.). Does this connect with what goes before? Certainly. Who was prophesied as being the tormentors who would inflict all of that damage on Ephraim and her pagan ally Damascus? The Assyrians, of course! And who was Sennacherib? Assyrian, of course, and did not Isaiah pinpoint these facts in the last line of the chapter? "This is the portion of them that despoil us, and the lot of them that rob us."

We believe it would be difficult to find a chapter anywhere in the Bible that is any more logically constructed and put together than is this one. It is high time for Christian commentators to stop parroting the old allegations that began in the eighteenth century.

One improvement in the writings of critics, however, must be admitted. Practically of them as far as we have been able to follow their writings now freely admit that this chapter is genuinely from Isaiah.

Isaiah 17:1-6

"The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. And the fortress 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 Jehovah of hosts. And it shall come to pass in that day that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvester gathereth the standing grain, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gathers ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the utmost branches of a fruitful tree, saith Jehovah the God of Israel."

The first three verses here announce "the imminent ruin of Damascus, in which Israel also will be involved."[3] Ephraim, the leading tribe of the Ten Northern Tribes loved to refer to his part of the nation as "Israel"; but it was never so. Those tribes were called "Ephraim" some three dozen times in the prophecy of Hosea.

"The cities of Aroer are forsaken ..." This could be synonymous with "Transjordan," "there being two cities of that name east of the Jordan, one on the north bank of the Arnon overlooking its deep gorge, and (2) the one before `Rabbah' (Joshua 13:25, KJV)."[4] A third city of the same name was "in the Negeb (Negeb: southland) 12 miles south-east of Beersheba."[5] Of course, what is meant by a reference like this is that all of the cities and villages that would be traversed by the invaders from Assyria would be treated to the "scorched earth" policy of warring nations in antiquity. All of the cities of Jerusalem, for example, were totally destroyed by Sennacherib's invasion that ended in his terrible disaster before the walls of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.

The connective word that looms in the background of every line of this chapter is "Assyrian." The Assyrian destruction of the entire Palestinian area is the subject here.

The mention of the terrible immediate prospect confronting Israel, all of it, applied also to Damascus and all of the other cities overrun by the cruel Assyrians.

"Those prospects are described under these three figures: (1) that of an emaciated body (Isaiah 17:4); that of a harvest field already harvested (Isaiah 17:5); and (3) that of an olive-tree already threshed (or beaten) (Isaiah 17:6)."[6]

The mention here of a few olives that were left and the gleanings from a harvest field indicate the oft-repeated promise of the Lord that "a remnant shall return" or a remnant shall survive, as symbolized and memorialized in the name of Isaiah's first son Shear-jashub.