Isaiah 17-18 ... Viewing the works of God through scripture

Isaiah 17

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.
 
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.

Isaiah 18

1 Woe to the land shadowing with wings,
which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:
2 That sendeth ambassadors by the sea,
even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying,
Go, ye swift messengers,
to a nation scattered and peeled,
to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto;
a nation meted out and trodden down,
whose land the rivers have spoiled!
 
3 All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth,
see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains;
and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.
 
4 For so the Lord said unto me,
I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place
like a clear heat upon herbs,
and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
5 For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect,
and the sour grape is ripening in the flower,
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 shall the present be brought unto the Lord of hosts
of a people scattered and peeled,
and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto;
a nation meted out and trodden under foot,
whose land the rivers have spoiled,
to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Zion.