Isaiah 1:7 - Exposition

Your country is desolate. Metaphor is now dropped, and the prophet describes in strong but simple language the judgments of God, which have already followed the sins of the nation. First of all, their land is "a desolation." It has been recently ravaged by an enemy; the towns have been burnt, the crops devoured. There is nothing to determine who the enemy had been. Knobel supposes the Edomites and Philistines, who invaded Judaea in the time of Ahaz ( 2 Chronicles 28:17 , 2 Chronicles 28:18 ), to be intended; Rosenmüller suggests the Israelites under Amaziah ( 2 Chronicles 25:21-24 ); while Mr. Cheyne supposes the devastation to have been wrought by the Assyrians under Sargon. If we could be assured that the prophecies of Isaiah are arranged in chronological order, we should either have to accept Rosenmüller's view, or to suppose some invasion of Judaea to have taken place in the later years of Uzziah of which no mention is made by the authors of Kings and Chronicles; but it is impossible to be certain on what principle Isaiah's prophecies are arranged. The mention of "strangers" is in favor of the enemy having been actual foreigners, and therefore not the Israelites. Your cities are burned with fire. The common fate of cities taken in war. In the Assyrian sculptures we often see the torch applied to them. Your land. Mr. Cheyne translates, "your tillage ." Adamah means "soil" or "ground" generally; but here no doubt denotes the ground which bore crops. Strangers devour it ; i.e. "foreigners" others than the sons of the soil—not necessarily persons of a different race, but still probably such persons. In your presence ; before your eyes, as you look on—an aggravation of the affliction. It is desolate, as overthrown by strangers ; literally, it is a desolation , like an overthrow by strangers . The near approach to repetition displeases moderns, who conjecture