17:1  An oracle concerning Damascus: Damascus shall cease to be a city and become a heap of ruins.

This is the same idea as the Moabites. Only this is just another aspect of the equation. Each of these nations typify something. They were actual nations, anciently. Damascus was also a kindred people. They were the people where Laban lived, where Jacob got himself wives and flocks. They were the people where Eliezer was sent to get a wife for Isaac. “Damascus shall cease to be a city, and become a heap of ruins.” Again, the same idea: covenant curse.

17:2  The cities of Aroer shall lie forsaken and become places for herds to recline, where no one will disturb them.

That is also a covenant curse, that cities lie desolate and animals kind of take over where people lived.

17:3  When Ephraim’s defense comes to an end, so shall the sovereignty of Damascus: as with the glory of the children of Israel, so shall it be with Aram’s remnant, says the Lord of Hosts.

Aram is the country, and Damascus is the capitol city there. They were generally in league with the northern ten-tribe kingdom led by Ephraim, ? Of Ephraim, and so the ten-tribe kingdom, as in this case, was just referred to as Ephraim. These nations hung together in an alliance against Assyria, as we saw in chapters seven and eight. But Isaiah prophesies that they’ll come to an end, that that alliance will not work. The Assyrians will come and take these nations captive and destroy their lands. Basically, that’s what he’s saying here. When Ephraim’s defense comes to an end, that is when Ephraim’s defenses will not stand up against the Assyrians, or Ephraim’s defenses somehow collapse, perhaps before the Assyrians come in, so shall the sovereignty of Damascus—the government of Damascus, whatever nation that is. Today it’s not sure. We know that the king of Assyria destroys entire nations and does away with the borders of nations and makes them all one empire. “As with the glory of the children of Israel, so shall it be with Aram’s remnant--” the northern kingdom, in this case, one main component of the Lord’s people. In an endtime scenario we would have some who would represent Ephraim, today, who would represent Damascus, today. They both hang together and they both come to an end.

17:4  In that day Jacob’s glory shall wane, and his fatness of body become leanness.

This kind of goes back to the time when Jacob and his twelve sons were beginning to suffer from the famine, and they went down to Egypt. A similar situation presents itself here, for Jacob’s descendants. They will suffer covenant curse—famine or otherwise. It will be a time of scarcity, perhaps through drought. Now Jacob could be the Lord’s people anywhere in the world. Or they could be in a particular situation in a particular place. That which is now glorious, or elite, or prosperous, fades away. And that’s part of the reversal of circumstances. The only people who really come out of the situation and reverse their leanness and become “fat” are the Lord’s people, Zion. They’re the ones who will eventually assume glory. So there’s a contrast here between Jacob, or the Lord’s people, in general, or the descendants of Jacob in the book of Isaiah, and a specific group among those people: the elect, or, the people of Zion. They’re not included in this scenario. The people of Zion are not part of Jacob that’s talked about here.

17:5–6  After being like a harvest of ripe grain, whose ears are reaped by the armful, he will become like ears plucked in the Valley of Rephaimwhen only the gleanings are left,

…which is covenant blessing. They were blessed of God, exceedingly, because of previous righteousness, because of former covenant keeping, because Jacob had covenants with God --”he will become like ears plucked in the Valley of Rephaim,” or the Valley of Ghosts, “when only the gleanings are left.” People who picked gleanings were the homeless, the destitute. They were allowed to come in after the main harvest was over, after the workers in the field had taken out virtually everything. They came, gathering whatever they could find that was left. And the Lord made provision for the poor in ancient Israel, that way, that some gleanings should be left for the poor, not take everything totally, when the grain was harvested. So the Lord’s people and the people of Damascus, in fact, will become like homeless people, like people in a destitute condition relying upon other peoples’ mercy, to be able to subsist by finding a little bit here, a little bit there, even though they had been blessed, once, and who chose to follow a different course in life.

17:6  or when an olive tree is beaten, having two or three berries in the topmost bough, or four or five in its most fruitful branch, says the Lord, the God of Israel.

Either the tree is loaded and a few berries are left, or the tree’s not yielding very much. It’s hardly worth it to harvest it. Again, this is denoting scarcity and all of that, the covenant curse.

17:7  In that day men will have regard to their Maker, and their eyes look to the Holy One of Israel,

So this has the effect of turning people back to God with whom they have a covenant relationship, but which they broke, bringing upon themselves curses of the covenant. Having been blessed for a time, and now being without, has the effect of causing them to repent.
“The Holy One of Israel” is used there, too, in an exemplary sense, as we’ve discussed before. They, too, would become sanctified or holy, consecrated, after the pattern of their God, their Maker.

17:8  and regard not the altars, the works of their hands, nor look to things made by their fingers—the idols of prosperity and the shining images.

God has made man. Man has made the altars, or the works of man’s hands—the idols, the idols of prosperity. People become prosperous, having been blessed of God, with plenty. They start coveting those thing that they have. And in that way they turn to idolatry and turn away from God and don’t have regard for him. And so, in verse eight, people are repenting; they’re going back to their God, leaving the other things they now recognize as a substitute for God.

17:9  In that day their mighty cities shall be like the deserted towns of the Hivites and Amorites, which they abandoned before the Israelites during the desolation.

The Israelites came into the land of Canaan and desolated it. Or they desolated the Canaanites who were there who were ripe in iniquity. They, too, were an idolatrous people. And they, too, were thrown out of the land by the Israelites. And now the same thing is happening to the Israelites themselves. Even their great and mighty cities will become like the deserted towns which they abandoned.

17:10  For you have forgotten your God, your salvation, and not remembered the Rock, your fortress.

Here, there’s several metaphors: your God, your salvation. So god, here, personifies salvation. God is salvation itself. Return to God for salvation because he saves you. He’s the Savior. And if you want salvation, you want him. He’s it. “And not remembered the Rock your fortress;” he’s also the rock upon which you stand. He’s your defense against all evil. Against all the powers of the adversary. These have been forgotten, and not remembered. Now they’re remembered again, hopefully. But those who forget God and don’t remember him, for them there is little hope. It says,

17:10–11  Therefore, though you plant choice crops and sow hybrid seed, and though you make them thrive the day you plant them, causing them to sprout the very morning you sow them, yet shall the harvest vanish in a day of diseases and incurable pain.

This shows they had a very sophisticated system of agriculture, horticulture, and they were very successful in what they did. But they didn’t have any control over the weather. But God can bring a drought if he wants to. Or he could bring enemies into the land. Their plentiful harvest vanishes. And the day is the day of judgment which comes upon the wicked, the day of universal judgment upon the nations of the world that is rife with diseases and incurable pain. There is no help at that time. It’s like a homeless person can’t go to the doctor, or can’t go to the hospital, and ends up totally miserable.

17:12  Woe to the many peoples in an uproar, who rage like the raging of the seas—tumultuous nations, in commotion like the turbulence of mighty waters!

While these are the nations of the Assyrian alliance-- remember that’s what the king of Assyria and his alliance is called by the name “sea” and “river--”, “sea in commotion, river in flood--” and his alliance of peoples, mentioned in chapter thirty: “The Lord of Hosts is marshaling and army for war. They come from a distant land beyond the horizon,” and so forth, and “an uproar among kingdoms, as of nations assembling, as a tumult on the mountains as of a vast multitude,” chapter thirteen, verse four—this is those nations. These are the people in an uproar who are raging. The same terms are used to describe them: tumult and uproar. They link with the power of chaos, a flood. The king of Assyria and his armies are a new flood that floods over the whole earth. There are very strong links, here, to the Assyrian alliance that conquers the world. Woe is a convent curse. We notice that whatever they do, whatever the king of Assyria and his alliance does to the nations of the world, to the wicked of the world, the Lord destroys at their hands, with their agency. They’re God’s instrument in destroying the wicked. They are the wicked destroying the wicked. Whatever they do to others is also done to themselves. So yes, there’s a woe upon the wicked of the world whom the Assyrian alliance of nations destroys. But there is a woe upon the Assyrian alliance themselves, as in this case. “Woe to the manly peoples in an uproar, who rage like the raging of the seas.”

The king of Assyria personifies rage, anger, wrath, indignation, and so forth. The people that follow him are like him, in that respect. They’re angry, they rage, they’re indignant, they’re wrathful; they’re vengeful, and seeking to harm others, especially the Lord’s people, if they can. Kind of like Hitler before the second world war, and during the second world war. He had it in for the Jews, the covenant people of the Lord. Any antichrist type will rage against the people of God, to try to annihilate them from the earth and take over the earth, to take over the world.

7:13  Nations may roar like the roaring of great waters, but when he rebukes them they will flee far away; they will be driven before the wind like chaff on the mountains, or as whirling dust in a storm.

So what? “But when he rebukes them they will flee far away;” When the Lord rebukes them he will do to them what they have done to others. “They will be driven before the wind like chaff on the mountains, or as whirling dust in a storm.” Notice the mixing of metaphors, here. They were waters; now they’re driven like chaff. Just like the Lord dried up the Red Sea. Israel passed over on dry land. So these nations are dried up, as it were, like whirling dust and chaff. And the “mountains” are other nations. “You will be driven before the wind,” as in wind, in a storm. The Lord can kick up a storm, too, just as they can, and bring upon them the very thing they did to others.

17:14  At evening time shall be the catastrophe, and before morning they shall be no more. This is the lot of those who plunder us, the fate of those who despoil us.

So they too, as they destroyed nations overnight in a Sodom and Gomorrah destruction, disappear overnight as well. They’ll be there one day and gone the next. Of course the “day” is also the day of judgment. It may be a literal day, an overnight destruction, actually in one night, or it can also be that day of judgment, that short period of time, that three years, when all of this scenario will play itself out. “Those who plunder us,” and “despoil us,” were the Assyrians. The Lord commissions him against a godless people, in chapter ten verses five and six. “To pillage for plunder, to spoliate for spoil.” These terms link this passage to the king of Assyria, again, as the flood imagery and the rage, the uproar, tumult, and so on, which link to the king of Assyria as mentioned earlier.