Isaiah 63:17

"O Jehovah, why dost thou make us to err from thy ways, and hardenest our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servant's sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. Thy people possessed it but a little while: our adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary. We are become as they over whom thou never barest rule, as they that were not called by thy name."

The judicial hardening of Israel announced in Isaiah 6:9,10, at this time, "had been going on ever since."[23] And from the appearance of Isaiah 63:17, it would seem that some of the people, no doubt a few of those faithful souls in the `righteous remnant' were fully aware of what was happening. "It was as easy for the Israelites to believe that he had hardened their hearts as that he had once hardened the heart of Pharaoh."[24] We believe that only the `righteous remnant' at that Point in Israel's history were capable of any such discernment. The near hopeless state of the nation as a whole surely appears in this.

We interpret these last two or three verses as words of the `righteous remnant,' who indeed did understand the situation in which the secular nation found itself. As Lowth expressed it:

"The Israelites were saying, `Not only have our enemies taken possession of Mount Sion, and trodden down thy sanctuary; even far worse than this has befallen us. Thou hast long since utterly cast us off; and dost not consider us as thy peculiar people.'[25]

This, of course, is a true appraisal of the situation that began to be discussed in Isaiah 1:2; 6:9,10, etc.