Isaiah 17King James Version
A short burden against Damascus and Ephraim. The fortress shall cease, the kingdom shall cease. Yet gleanings shall be left. In that day shall a man look to his Maker and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
Damascus will be a ruinous heap. Israel and Syria, allied in the Syro-Ephraimite crisis, will be stripped like an olive harvest with a few scattered clusters remaining. Jacob's glory fades, the fat of his flesh grows lean. Because Israel forgot its Maker and turned to idols, only a gleanings-remnant survives. The nations that thunder against God will be silenced before morning.
Forgetting who made you is the root of vulnerability. Israel's alliance with Syria signals a forgetting that brings the harvest it feared down on itself.
verse: "At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel", the remnant's recovery begins with a return of gaze, looking toward the one who was forgotten.
The Syrian-Palestinian corridor around 734 BC. Damascus, capital of Aram, is a great city by ancient standards. Its alliance with northern Israel makes strategic sense but is spiritually catastrophic from Isaiah's perspective. The olive harvest image comes from the actual landscape: trees beaten until only the highest, most inaccessible olives remain.
Isaiah the prophet. Damascus and Syria as primary subject. Israel, specifically the northern kingdom, as the collateral party to the oracle. The unnamed nations who thunder and roar against Jerusalem.
The oracle is dated to the Syro-Ephraimite crisis (734 BC), making it one of the most historically anchored chapters in the first section. The remnant olive tree imagery in verses 5-6 became a rich metaphor in Paul's letter to Rome, where the remnant logic grounds his argument about Israel and the Gentiles.
The leaning-tree and gleaned-olive imagery carries a melancholy that is almost pastoral. Something that was full is now sparse. The desolation is not angry, just empty.
1The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
2The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
3The fortress also 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 the LORD of hosts.
4And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
5And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim.
6Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel.
7At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
8And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images.
9In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of Israel: and there shall be desolation.
10Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips:
11In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
12Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
13The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
14And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.