Your land is desolate; your cities are burned with fire. Foreigners devour your fields before you—a desolation demolished by strangers.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
- KJV Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
- NKJV Your country is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire; Strangers devour your land in your presence; And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
- NASB ¶Your land is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire; As for your fields, strangers are devouring them in front of you; It is desolation, as overthrown by strangers.
- NLT Your country lies in ruins, and your towns are burned. Foreigners plunder your fields before your eyes and destroy everything they see.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Isaiah describes the land's desolation: cities burned and foreigners devouring it. The outward ruin mirrors the nation's inward sin.
Overview
This likely reflects the devastation of invasions such as the Assyrian campaigns of Isaiah's day. The covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 are coming to pass as warned. Such judgment underscores the seriousness of sin and the mercy of the remnant God preserves.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 21
- Deut 28:43The foreigner living among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you sink down lower and lower.
- Deut 28:33A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed.
- Lam 5:2Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners.
- Ezek 30:12I will make the streams dry up and sell the land to the wicked. By the hands of foreigners I will bring desolation upon the land and everything in it. I, the LORD, have spoken.
- Hos 7:9Foreigners consume his strength, but he does not notice. Even his hair is streaked with gray, but he does not know.
- Deut 28:48–52you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
- 2 Chr 28:16–21At that time King Ahaz sent for help from the king of Assyria.
- 2 Chr 28:5So the LORD his God delivered Ahaz into the hand of the king of Aram, who attacked him and took many captives to Damascus. Ahaz was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force.
- Hos 8:7For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. There is no standing grain; what sprouts fails to yield flour. Even if it should produce, the foreigners would swallow it up.
- Isa 9:5For every trampling boot of battle and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.
- Isa 24:10–12The city of chaos is shattered; every house is closed to entry.
- Jer 2:15The young lions have roared at him; they have growled with a loud voice. They have laid waste his land; his cities lie in ruins, without inhabitant.
- Jer 6:8Be forewarned, O Jerusalem, or I will turn away from you; I will make you a desolation, a land without inhabitant.”
- Ps 107:39When they are decreased and humbled by oppression, evil, and sorrow,
- Isa 5:9I heard the LORD of Hosts declare: “Surely many houses will become desolate, great mansions left unoccupied.
- Lev 26:34Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.
- Ps 107:34and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.
- Isa 6:11Then I asked: “How long, O Lord?” And He replied: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left unoccupied and the land is desolate and ravaged,
- Isa 34:9Edom’s streams will be turned to tar, and her soil to sulfur; her land will become a blazing pitch.
- Isa 5:17Lambs will graze as in their own pastures, and strangers will feed in the ruins of the wealthy.
- Isa 5:5–6Now I will tell you what I am about to do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be consumed; I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled.
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Christ at the center
Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).
How Isaiah 1:7 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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