10 For you have not given honour to the God of your salvation, and have not kept in mind the Rock of your strength; for this cause you made a garden of Adonis, and put in it the vine-cuttings of a strange god;
And you have given no thought to the Lord your Maker, by whom the heavens were stretched out, and the earth placed on its base; and you went all day in fear of the wrath of the cruel one, when he was making ready for your destruction. And where is the wrath of the cruel one?
Let your hope be in the Lord for ever: for the Lord Jah is an unchanging Rock.
He is the Rock, complete is his work; for all his ways are righteousness: a God without evil who keeps faith, true and upright is he.
They had no memory of God their saviour, who had done great things in Egypt;
Come back to us, O God of our salvation, and be angry with us no longer.
And they will be building houses and living in them; planting vine-gardens and getting the fruit of them. They will no longer be building for the use of others, or planting for others to have the fruit: for the days of my people will be like the days of a tree, and my loved ones will have joy in full measure in the work of their hands.
Though good grain was planted, they have got in thorns: they have given themselves pain without profit: they will be shamed on account of their produce, because of the burning wrath of the Lord.
O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who give you up will be put to shame; those who go away from you will be cut off from the earth, because they have given up the Lord, the fountain of living waters.
And I will give her punishment for the days of the Baals, to whom she has been burning perfumes, when she made herself fair with her nose-rings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, giving no thought to me, says the Lord. For this cause I will make her come into the waste land and will say words of comfort to her.
Destruction has overtaken my people because they have no knowledge; because you have given up knowledge, I will give you up, so that you will be no priest to me, because you have not kept in mind the law of your God, I will not keep your children in my memory.
For Israel has no memory of his Maker, and has put up the houses of kings; and Judah has made great the number of his walled towns. But I will send a fire on his towns and put an end to his great houses.
So because the poor man is crushed under your feet, and you take taxes from him of grain: you have made for yourselves houses of cut stone, but you will not take your rest in them; the fair vine-gardens planted by your hands will not give you wine.
Still, I will be glad in the Lord, my joy will be in the God of my salvation.
You have no thought for the Rock, your father, you have no memory of the God who gave you birth.
And your strength will be used up without profit; for your land will not give her increase and the trees of the field will not give their fruit.
Then take care that you are not turned away from the Lord your God and from keeping his orders and decisions and laws which I give you this day:
Take care that your hearts are not lifted up in pride, giving no thought to the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house;
You will take a wife, but another man will have the use of her: the house which your hands have made will never be your resting-place: you will make a vine-garden, and never take the fruit of it.
You will take much seed out into the field, and get little in; for the locust will get it. You will put in vines and take care of them, but you will get no wine or grapes from them; for they will be food for worms. Your land will be full of olive-trees, but there will be no oil for the comfort of your body; for your olive-tree will give no fruit. You will have sons and daughters, but they will not be yours; for they will go away prisoners into a strange land. All your trees and the fruit of your land will be the locust's.
This will I do to you: I will put fear in your hearts, even wasting disease and burning pain, drying up the eyes and making the soul feeble, and you will get no profit from your seed, for your haters will take it for food.
For their rock is not like our Rock, even our haters themselves being judges.
The sinners and all the nations who have no memory of God will be turned into the underworld.
The Lord is my Rock, my walled town, and my saviour; my God, my Rock, in him will I put my faith; my breastplate, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
You will give us an answer in righteousness by great acts of power, O God of our salvation; you who are the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of the far-off lands of the sea;
Praise be to the Lord, who is our support day by day, even the God of our salvation. (Selah.) Our God is for us a God of salvation; his are the ways out of death.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 17
Commentary on Isaiah 17 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 17
Syria and Ephriam were confederate against Judah (ch. 7:1, 2), and, they being so closely linked together in their counsels, this chapter, though it be entitled "the burden of Damascus' (which was the head city of Syria), reads the doom of Israel too.
In order of time this chapter should be placed next after ch. 9, for the destruction of Damascus, here foretold, happened in the reign of Ahaz, 2 Ki. 16:9.
Isa 17:1-5
We have here the burden of Damascus; the Chaldee paraphrase reads it, The burden of the cup of the curse to drink to Damascus in; and, the ten tribes being in alliance, they must expect to pledge Damascus in this cup of trembling that is to go round.
Isa 17:6-8
Mercy is here reserved, in a parenthesis, in the midst of judgment, for a remnant that should escape the common ruin of the kingdom of the ten tribes. Though the Assyrians took all the care they could that none should slip out of their net, yet the meek of the earth were hidden in the day of the Lord's anger, and had their lives given them for a prey and made comfortable to them by their retirement to the land of Judah, where they had the liberty of God's courts.
Isa 17:9-11
Here the prophet returns to foretel the woeful desolations that should be made in the land of Israel by the army of the Assyrians.
Isa 17:12-14
These verses read the doom of those that spoil and rob the people of God. If the Assyrians and Israelites invade and plunder Judah, if the Assyrian army take God's people captive and lay their country waste, let them know that ruin will be their lot and portion. They are here brought in,