Isaiah 17

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¹The pronouncement concerning Damascus: “Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city And will become a fallen ruin. ✦ ²“The cities of Aroer are abandoned; They will be for herds to lie down in, And there will be no one to frighten them. ✦ ³“The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, And sovereignty from Damascus And the remnant of Aram; They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel,” Declares the Lord of armies. ✦ ⁴¶Now on that day the glory of Jacob will fade, And the fatness of his flesh will become lean. ✦ ⁵It will be like the reaper gathering the standing grain, As his arm harvests the ears, Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain In the Valley of Rephaim. ✦ ⁶Yet gleanings will be left in it like the shaking of an olive tree, Two or three olives on the topmost branch, Four or five on the branches of a fruitful tree, Declares the Lord, the God of Israel. ✦ ⁷On that day man will look to his Maker And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel. ✦ ⁸And he will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, Nor will he look to that which his fingers have made, Even the Asherim and incense altars. ✦ ⁹On that day their strong cities will be like abandoned places in the forest, Or like branches which they abandoned before the sons of Israel; And the land will be a desolation. ✦ ¹⁰For you have forgotten the God of your salvation And have not remembered the rock of your refuge. Therefore you plant delightful plants And set them with vine shoots of a strange god. ✦ ¹¹On 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. ✦ ¹²¶Oh, the uproar of many peoples Who roar like the roaring of the seas, And the rumbling of nations Who rush on like the rumbling of mighty waters! ✦ ¹³The nations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters, But He will rebuke them, and they will flee far away, And be chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind, Or like whirling dust before a gale. ✦ ¹⁴At evening time, behold, there is terror! Before morning they are gone. This will be the fate of those who plunder us And the lot of those who pillage us. ✦

Tap any verse for its study page. Underlined terms mark a concept, person, or place; ✦ marks verses with cross-references.

Where this chapter connects

Isa 10 ·9 Isa 7 ·6 Hos 13 ·6 Deut 32 ·5 Isa 24 ·5 Isa 9 ·4 Hos 10 ·4 Hos 8 ·4

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 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.

Resources, by level

Lay

★ Start hereVideoBibleProject — video overviews & word studiesBibleProject · 5–10 min · Free · evangelical
Free animated overviews of every book of the Bible, plus themes and Hebrew/Greek word studies — the best visual on-ramp to any book. (Biblical-theology, broadly evangelical, not distinctly Reformed.)
★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical
A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.

Pastoral

SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical
Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.

Seminary

★ Start hereCommentaryThe Book of Isaiah (NICOT)John N. Oswalt · Paid · evangelical
The standard evangelical commentary on Isaiah — thorough and devotionally warm.

Commentaries & study tools

VideoBibleProject — Isaiah videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
VideoWatch teaching on Isaiah 17YouTube · Lay · Free
Sermons and chapter teaching from across YouTube.
CommentaryEnduring Word — Isaiah 17David Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical
Readable, verse-by-verse exposition of the whole chapter.
CommentaryMatthew Henry on IsaiahMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
ReferenceBlue Letter Bible — Isaiah 17Blue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free
Interlinear, lexicon, and study tools across the chapter.

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