Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Isaiah 17:4-12
The Future That Israel Can Look Forward To (Isaiah 17:4).
Israel's future is bleak, but it will make them set their eyes on their Maker, the Holy One of Israel.
Analysis of Isaiah 17:4.
a And it will come about in that day that the glory of Jacob will be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh will wax lean, and it will be as when the harvester gathers the standing corn, and his arms reap the ears. Yes, it will be as when one gleans ears, in the valley of Rephaim (Isaiah 17:4).
b “Yet there will be left there in gleanings, as the beating of an olive tree, two or three berries at the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful tree,” Says Yahweh, the God of Israel (Isaiah 17:6).
c In that day will a man look to his Maker, and his eyes will have respect to the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 17:7).
d And he will not look to the altars, to the work of his hands, nor will he have respect to what his fingers have made, either the Asherim or the sun-images (Isaiah 17:8).
d In that day will his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel, and it will be a desolation (Isaiah 17:9).
c For you have forgotten the God of your deliverance, and have not been mindful of the rock of your strength (‘your strong rock') (Isaiah 17:10).
b Therefore you plant ‘desirable' plants (or ‘plants of the desirable one'), and set it with strange (‘foreign') slips (Isaiah 17:11 a).
a In the day of your planting you hedge it in, and in the morning you make your seed to blossom, but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and desperate sorrow (Isaiah 17:11 b).
In ‘a' the future is bleak for Israel, and its harvests will be thin, and in the parallel whatever their efforts they will not enjoy the benefit of their harvests. In ‘b' even the gleaning will be sparse, and in the parallel it is because they plant foreign plants linked with idolatry. In ‘c' this will turn their eyes on their Maker, on the Holy One of Israel, and in the parallel this will be necessary because they have forgotten the God of their deliverance, and have not had in mind the Rock of their strength. In ‘d' they will cease to trifle with the gods who have failed them, for in the parallel their strong cities will be like ancient ruins.
‘And it will come about in that day that the glory of Jacob will be made thin,
And the fatness of his flesh will wax lean,
And it will be as when the harvester gathers the standing corn,
And his arms reap the ears.
Yes, it will be as when one gleans ears,
In the valley of Rephaim.'
If their glory being like that of Israel had raised hopes in Syria, they are now dashed, for here we have confirmation of the reducing of ‘Jacob's' glory, the glory of the children of Israel. In the day when God acts it will be made sparse, and much of Israel's wealth and fruitfulness will disappear. In the same way as the flesh disappears from a very sick man as he lies there in his illness, so will they be lean.
The second picture is of shortage so that the harvester ensures by use of his arms that he drops very little, while the gleaners can thus gather almost nothing. The valley of Rephaim was probably infamous for its poor harvests. It was a place favoured by the Philistine armies when they attacked Israel, possibly suggesting its comparative bareness. And such sparse gleanings from a sparse harvest are a picture of what ‘Jacob' (Israel) will have to survive on.
‘And there will be left there in gleanings,
As the beating of an olive tree,
Two or three berries at the top of the uppermost bough,
Four or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful tree,
Says Yahweh, the God of Israel.'
When the olive tree is beaten with sticks to bring down its berries there are always a few that are resistant. In this case what will be left will be only two or three at the top, four or five in the outmost branches. Those are the gleanings (what is left for the poor after harvesting). And that scarcity of gleanings is a picture of Israel's desperate straits. The gleanings will be almost non-existent because of the poverty of the harvest.
‘In that day will a man look to his Maker,
And his eyes will have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
And he will not look to the altars,
To the work of his hands,
Nor will he have respect to what his fingers have made,
Either the Asherim or the sun-images.'
But suddenly, out of the blue, good comes out of bad. This is typical of Isaiah (compare Isaiah 10:20). He now describes the holy stock (Isaiah 6:13). The result of this chastening will be that some, the remnant, will look to their Maker, and will give due regard to the Holy One of Israel, for there will be nowhere else to look. Their eyes will be turned and fixed on Him, and they will look to Him constantly in their daily lives and have due regard to His covenant. For their idols will have failed them and they will turn to God from idols and serve the living and true God, and wait for the promised Immanuel. They will turn away from hand-made altars, and man-fashioned idols, whether Asherim (wooden poles or images representing the goddess of the fertility cult) or sun-images. Thus it is clear that the worship of the sun-images and of the Asherah-images was at this time predominant in Israel.
Note the stark contrast between God the Maker (compare Isaiah 44:2; Isaiah 51:13; Isaiah 54:5) and man His creation on the one hand (man will look to his Maker), with man the maker, and the gods of his creation on the other (he will not look to his own handywork or to what his fingers have made). They should note that there is only one God Who is never fashioned and shaped by man, the One Who Himself created all things and can never be represented by an acceptable image. He is thus saying, do not look to the altars and their gods but look at them and see what they really are, the works of men's hands, merely a part of creation and the product of men's minds and fingers.
‘In that day will his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel, and it will be a desolation.'
But while some will be pleasing to God the righteousness of the righteous will not deliver the majority in the day when God acts. Their strong, fortified cities will be deserted. They will become like the well known ruins of ancient Canaanite cities in the forest, or on mountain tops, where no one went any longer, cities that had been deserted because of the arrival of the children of Israel in the power of Yahweh. What had been done by His power when they were faithful to the covenant, would be done to them now that they had broken the covenant and lost His power. They were now as sinful as the Canaanites had been for they had copied their ways. Thus the whole land would be a desolation.
‘For you have forgotten the God of your deliverance,
And have not been mindful of the rock of your strength (‘your strong rock').
Therefore you plant ‘desirable' plants (or ‘plants of the desirable one'),
And set it with strange (‘foreign') slips.
In the day of your planting you hedge it in,
And in the morning you make your seed to blossom,
But the harvest flees away in the day of grief and desperate sorrow.'
This is in parallel with Isaiah 17:7. All this will happen to them because they had forgotten God the deliverer. The contrast is between the God of Deliverance (Who is also God their Maker), even the Strong Rock, Who had destroyed those Canaanite cities through His once faithful people, and their present feeble attempts, the product of turning to the ways of the Canaanites, to affect nature by force-growing plants dedicated to a ‘desirable' god, (a beautiful image), and slips from foreign plants which had similar religious significance, and putting them in pots or baskets and making them grow unnaturally quickly so as to stimulate nature, all feeble attempts to stimulate life. They would discover that it would be useless. They would die just as quickly as they grew (compare Matthew 13:5). Thus when the day of grief and desperate sorrow comes the harvest from their efforts will be unable to help them. It flees away in helplessness and embarrassment.
The slips from foreign plants were also a hint of what they were seeking to do in seeking help and alliances from foreign nations. Those too would flee away in the day of trouble.
So the charge is that they have forgotten God their Maker, and they have forgotten the Delivering God Who had delivered them from Egypt, and from many foes since; the Delivering God Who had delivered up the cities of the Canaanites to them; the God Who is a strength-giving Rock; the God Who has proved Himself by His actions, and they have turned to nature gods who have no power, who cannot deliver or protect them, who failed the Canaanites, and who cannot strengthen in the hour of need.
But as a result of all that will befall them those who are left will turn and look to Him. The emphasis on their looking to God as their Maker and the Holy One of Israel may suggest the thought that they are having to go right back to basics. They turn to Him as the One Who had made them, and as the One Who had specially favoured Israel by His own choice. They have lost their right to Him as the Deliverer.