Isaiah 17-18: God’s Correction Factor

17 ¶ The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

² The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.

³ The succour of Ephraim shall cease, and the kingdom from Damascus and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the sons of Israel, saith the LORD of the hosts.

⁴ And 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.

⁵ And it shall be as when the harvestman gathers the sheaves and reaps the grain with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathers grain in the valley of Rephaim.

⁶ ¶ Yet gleaning shall be left in it as when the olive tree is shaken; two or three berries are left in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel.

⁷ At that day man shall look to his Maker, and his eyes shall see the Holy One of Israel.

⁸ And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands; neither shall he look upon that which his fingers have made, either the groves or the images of the sun.

⁹ ¶ In that day the cities of his strength shall be as the gleanings which remain on the shoots and on the branches, which were left of the sons of Israel; and there shall be desolation.

¹⁰ Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy saving health and hast not been mindful of the Rock of thy strength; therefore thou shalt plant pleasant plants and set it with strange slips:

¹¹ In the day that thou shalt plant them, thou shalt make them to grow and shalt make thy seed to flourish early; but in the day of gathering, the harvest shall flee and shall be desperate sorrow.

¹² ¶ Woe to the multitude of many peoples, which shall make a noise like the noise of the sea; and the rushing of nations, that make an uprising like the rushing of mighty waters!

¹³ The peoples shall make noise like the rushing of great waters, but God shall reprehend them, and they shall flee far off and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind and like the tumbleweed before the whirlwind.

¹⁴ And behold at eveningtide trouble, and before the morning she is not. This is the portion of them that tread on us and the lot of them that spoil us.

18 ¶ Woe to the land which makes shade with her wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:

² He who sends ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to the people scattered and peeled, to the people full of fears from their beginning, and until now, a people tired of waiting and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!

³ All ye inhabitants of the world and neighbours of the land, when he lifts up a banner as an example on the mountains, ye shall see it; and when he blows the shofar, ye shall hear it.

⁴ For so the LORD said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will look forth from my dwelling place like a clear sun after the rain and like a cloud filled with dew in the heat of the harvest.

⁵ For before the harvest, when the fruit is perfect, and after the flower is past and the fruit is mature, then he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches.

⁶ They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth; and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.

⁷ In that time the present shall be brought unto the LORD of the hosts, the people scattered and peeled, the people full of fears from their beginning and until now, a people tired of waiting and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the LORD of the hosts, to the Mount Zion.