- Isaiah 17 (Contemporary English Version)
- This is a message about Damascus: Damascus is doomed! It will end up in ruins.
- The villages around Aroer will be deserted, with only sheep living there and no one to bother them.
- Israel will lose its fortresses. The kingdom of Damascus will be destroyed; its survivors will suffer the same fate as Israel. The LORD All-Powerful has promised this.
- When that time comes, the glorious nation of Israel will be brought down; its prosperous people will be skin and bones.
- Israel will be like wheat fields in Rephaim Valley picked clean of grain.
- It will be like an olive tree beaten with a stick, leaving two or three olives or maybe four or five on the highest or most fruitful branches. The LORD God of Israel has promised this.
- At that time the people will turn and trust their Creator, the holy God of Israel.
- They have built altars and places for burning incense to their goddess Asherah, and they have set up sacred poles for her. But they will stop worshiping at these places.
- Israel captured powerful cities and chased out the people who lived there. But these cities will lie in ruins, covered over with weeds and underbrush.
- Israel, you have forgotten the God who saves you, the one who is the mighty rock where you find protection. You plant the finest flowers to honor a foreign god.
- The plants may sprout and blossom that very same morning, but it will do you no good, because you will suffer endless agony.
- The nations are a noisy, thunderous sea.
- But even if they roar like a fearsome flood, God will give the command to turn them back. They will be like dust, or like a tumbleweed blowing across the hills in a windstorm.
- In the evening their attack is fierce, but by morning they are destroyed. This is what happens to those who raid and rob us.
The next burdensome message, or oracle, is against Damascus, the capital city of Syria (also known as Aram). Damascus will fall to the Assyrians who was used as God's chief instrument of judgment at that time. Though the oracle is against Damascus, Israel is included because of her alliance with Syria. Israel looked to Syria for help in time of trouble and Syria looked to her idols, neither looked to the true God. But on this occasion the threat was so great verse 7 tells us that, "On that day people will look to their Maker and will turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel."
History tells us that Damascus was destroyed by the Assyrians in 732 B.C. and Israel fell ten years later. The result, according to this chapter of Isaiah, was that the cities of Syria were abandoned - they were no more. Israel was left weakened as a healthy body that becomes emaciated. Verses 5 and 6 decribe Israel's state following her defeat to the Assyrians as a field of grain or as an olive tree that are barren after they have been harvested.
On the day of their fall, the people of both nations finally looked to the Holy One of Israel rather than the altars they had made with their hands. Why do we only look to God when we are in trouble? Why can we not credit Him for the good times of life and give Him praise because of it?
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