Isaiah 17:3 - Exposition

The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim . Sargon did not destroy Samaria on the occasion of his first capture. But he says that he "reduced it to a heap of ruins" on the occasion of its second capture ('Records of the Past,' l.s . c .). And the kingdom from Damascus . We do not hear of any King of Damascus after Rezin, who was slain by Tiglath-Pileser about B.C. 732. Damascus, however, reasserted her independence in B.C. 721, and probably set up a king at the same time. In B.C. 720 she was reduced and destroyed. Nothing more is heard of her until B.C. 694—the eleventh year of Sennacherib—when her "governor" is Assyrian Eponym, and she must therefore have been absorbed into the Assyrian empire. The remnant of Syria . This phrase shows that the great blow which struck down Syria—Tiglath-Pileser's capture of Damascus and slaughter of Rezin—was a thing of the past. Syria was already but "a remnant." Now she was to cease to exist altogether. They shall be as the glory of the children of Israel . Ironical. The irony is made apparent by the next verse.