Isaiah 17:9-11

In that day, &c.— Isaiah 17:9. As a forsaken bush and a top shoot;—ver. 10. Therefore didst thou plant—and didst set, Isaiah 17:11. In the day of thy planting didst thou make increase, and in the morning madest thy seed to flourish: deplorable will be the harvest in the day of trouble, and sorrow incurable. This period, which is more difficult to be understood than the former, contains in my idea, says Vitringa, a confirmation and amplification of the former judicial sentence, with respect to another degree of judgment, whereby the kingdom of the Ephraimites should be wholly subverted; so that what Tiglath-pileser had left Salmanezer should entirely desolate and destroy, after a few years attacking of the Ephraimites; taking and subverting those cities, which, like berries on the highest and lowest boughs, had been left to this nation. In that day, says the prophet, shall his strong cities, lest, [the Assyrians under Tiglath] because of, or in respect to, the children of Israel; (i.e. that they might not wholly depopulate the land, but leave them some remnant of state and power;) those very cities, I say, shall be taken and destroyed, and among them Samaria, See Jeremiah 9:7. The phrase, It shall be for a desolation, is to be understood collectively, though some suppose that Samaria is here particularly pointed at. In the two next verses we have the defence of the judgment denounced in the 9th, the first part whereof is plain enough: the Ephraimites had forsaken their God, and had placed their confidence in false deities. The latter part is more obscure. Grammatically understood, the meaning is, "Therefore, because thou hast been forgetful of thy God, though thou hast diligently cultivated and planted thy lands with the choicest and best plants of every kind, and hast done every thing to make those plants grow, and to gain increase, yet hast thou profited nothing; for, when the Assyrian army shall come, it shall only be a heap of an harvest, to be consumed in a short time, in the day of thy grief." But Vitringa thinks the passage, thus understood, not sufficiently sublime for our prophet; and therefore he understands it mystically, concerning the extreme desire of the people of Ephraim for the superstitions of foreign nations, which he elegantly calls, strange, or exotic plants, but which, though obtained and planted by them with the greatest care, should be abolished and destroyed, to their great ignominy and shame, together with the cities and fields in which they were consecrated, and should afford a deplorable harvest in the time of the greatest calamity, even now threatening them from the Assyrian; the truth whereof was proved by the event. See Matthew 15:13. 2 Chronicles 30:6 and Vitringa.