1.
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 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.
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 gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim.
6.
Yet 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.
7.
At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
8.
And 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.
9.
In 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.
10.
Because 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:
11.
In 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.
THE HARVEST OF A GODLESS LIFE
‘The harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.’
Isaiah 17:11
The original application of these words is to Judah’s alliance with Damascus, which Isaiah resolutely opposed. We may take it in a more general way as containing large truths which affect the life of every one of us.
I. The sin of a godless life.
( a) The sin charged. Merely negative—forgetting a very common sin.
( b) The implied criminality of it.
( c) The implied absurdity of it.
II. The busy effort and apparent success of a godless life.
( a) If the soul is not satisfied in God, there are hungry desires. This is the explanation of the feverish activity of much of our life.
( b) Such work is far harder than the work of serving God.
( c) Such work has sometimes quick, present success.
III. The end of it all.
( a) How poor the fruit of a God-forgetting life! ‘One heap’ from all the long struggle.
( b) A terrible, inevitable consummation. ‘Put in the sickle.’
( c) A sad ‘harvest home’ to some. Terrible words, ‘grief and desperate sorrow.’ We dare not dilate on it. How different from returning with joy, bringing our sheaves with us!
Illustration
‘The prophet says, “In the day of judgment, which is itself just at the same time the day of harvest, the produce of harvest is there in heaps.” But this harvest day is “a day of grief and of desperate sorrow.” Being such, the harvest is a bad one, and the heaps signify heaped up misfortune. Therefore the prophet says that the fruit of that planting shall be a harvest that shall come in on the day of grief and incurable pain, thus itself shall have the form of grief and incurable pain.’
12.
Woe 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!
13.
The 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.
14.
And 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.