Isaiah 17:9 - Meaning and Application

Here the prophet returns to warn again about the terrible ruin the Assyrian army would bring on the land of Israel. The strong cities would not be able to protect the country, and they would be left empty. They would be like a forsaken branch high up in an old tree, bare, dry, and dead. So the cities would look after the people fled and the enemy stripped them and damaged them (Isaiah 17:9).

They would be like the cities the Canaanites, the former people of the land, left behind when God brought Israel into Canaan by his mighty power, cities they had built themselves. Just as the Canaanites fled before Israel, so Israel would now flee before the Assyrians. In this way God’s warning would come true: if they kept doing the same sins, the land would vomit them out, just as it had vomited out the nations before them (Leviticus 18:28). And as long as God was with them, one Israelite could chase a thousand, but once they made him their enemy, a thousand would run from the threat of one. Then the cities would become desolate, as the law had warned (Leviticus 26:31; Deuteronomy 28:51).

The country itself would also be laid waste (Isaiah 17:10, 17:11). The reason for such a great judgment was the sin of the people living there. They had forgotten the God who saved them, along with the many great rescues he had already given them. They had forgotten that they depended on him and owed everything to him. They had not remembered the rock of their strength, the one who is strong himself and who had often been their strength when they would otherwise have fallen.

The God who saves us is the rock of our strength, and forgetting him lies at the root of all sin. When we forget the Lord our God, we turn our own way and bring ruin on ourselves. The land had been carefully improved and made beautiful, which made the coming destruction even sadder. At seedtime it looked like a garden and a vineyard, full of pleasant plants and choice growth from the land itself. The people were not content with that, so they sent to nearby nations for unusual plants, because strange and imported things seemed more valuable to them.

This showed their pride and vanity, and especially their desire to be like the nations around them. Wheat, honey, and oil were their main goods (Ezekiel 27:17), but that was not enough. They wanted flowers and greens with foreign names, brought in at great cost. They put much effort into making those plants grow, using hotbeds and coverings to force the soil and protect the seedlings. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the beauty of nature, but it is foolish to value such things too highly or spend more time and money on them than they deserve.

Yet here the point is broader. It shows how hard they worked to cultivate their land and how much they expected from it. They doubted that their plants would do anything but grow and flourish. But when harvest time came, the same ground would look like a wilderness, a dark and miserable place. To those who saw it, and even more to those who owned it, the harvest would be a heap of confusion in a day of grief and hopeless sorrow.

Harvest was usually a time of joy, with singing and shouts (Isaiah 16:10). But this harvest would be eaten up by the hungry (Job 5:5), so it would become a day of grief. It would hurt all the more because the plants had been so pleasant and costly, and because the people had expected so much from them (Isaiah 17:10). Harvest could sometimes bring grief if the crop was poor or the weather bad, but there was still hope for the next year. Here, however, the sorrow would be hopeless, because they would see not only this year’s produce taken away, but the land itself pass into the hands of the conquerors.

The margin reads, “The harvest shall be removed,” meaning it would be carried off into the enemy’s land or camp (Deuteronomy 28:33), on the very day they expected to inherit it. Then there would be deadly sorrow. This is a good reminder not to store up our treasure in things we can lose so quickly, but in that better portion that can never be taken from us.