In the day you will make your plant to grow, And in the morning you will make your seed to flourish; But the harvest will be a heap of ruins In the day of grief and desperate sorrow.
Parallel translations
- WEB In the day of your planting, you hedge it in. In the morning, you make your seed blossom, but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
- KJV 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.
- BSB though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout—yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.
- NASB On the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in, And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom; But the harvest will flee On a day of illness and incurable pain.
- NLT They may sprout on the day you set them out; yes, they may blossom on the very morning you plant them, but you will never pick any grapes from them. Your only harvest will be a load of grief and unrelieved pain.
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
Though they carefully cultivate their plantings to flourish quickly, the harvest will flee in a day of grief and sorrow. Their labors yield only disappointment under judgment.
Overview
Despite diligent effort to make their foreign plantings grow, the expected harvest collapses into desperate sorrow. Their toil apart from God proves vain and fruitless. The passage illustrates the futility of all human striving that ignores the Lord and trusts in idols.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Job 4:8According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity, and sow trouble, reap the same.
- Hos 8:7For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind. He has no standing grain. The stalk will yield no head. If it does yield, strangers will swallow it up.
- Rom 2:8–9but to those who are self-seeking, and don’t obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will be wrath and indignation,
- Hos 9:1–4Don’t rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations; for you were unfaithful to your God. You love the wages of a prostitute at every grain threshing floor.
- Jer 5:31The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own authority; and my people love to have it so. What will you do in the end of it?
- Hos 9:16Ephraim is struck. Their root has dried up. They will bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, yet I will kill the beloved ones of their womb.”
- Joel 1:5–12Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
- Ps 90:6In the morning it sprouts and springs up. By evening, it is withered and dry.
- Hos 10:12–15Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap according to kindness. Break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek Yahweh, until he comes and rains righteousness on you.
- Isa 18:5–6For before the harvest, when the blossom is over, and the flower becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and he will cut down and take away the spreading branches.
- Matt 8:11–12I tell you that many will come from the east and the west, and will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven,
- Isa 65:13–14Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, “Behold, my servants will eat, but you will be hungry; behold, my servants will drink, but you will be thirsty. Behold, my servants will rejoice, but you will be disappointed;
- Rom 2:5But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the righteous judgment of God;
- Gal 6:7–8Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 17:11 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
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.