“Your builders hurry; Your destroyers and devastators Will leave you.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your children hurry. Your destroyers and those who devastated you will leave you.
- KJV Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee.
- BSB Your builders hasten back; your destroyers and wreckers depart from you.
- NKJV Your sons shall make haste; Your destroyers and those who laid you waste Shall go away from you.
- NLT Soon your descendants will come back, and all who are trying to destroy you will go away.
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
Zion's children hurry back while her destroyers depart, signaling the reversal of her desolation.
Overview
The same God who remembers Zion now acts: her builders or children return swiftly while those who tore her down leave. The city's fortunes are reversed. This rebuilding of God's people prefigures the gathering and growth of the church, the Zion God raises up through Christ (Hebrews 12:22).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Isa 51:13Have you forgotten Yahweh your Maker, who stretched out the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth? Do you live in fear continually all day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he prepares to destroy? Where is the fury of the oppressor?
- Isa 62:5For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you. As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you.
- Ezek 28:24There shall be no more a pricking brier to the house of Israel, nor a hurting thorn of any that are around them, that scorned them; and they shall know that I am the Lord Yahweh.
- Isa 51:22–23Thus says your Lord Yahweh, your God who pleads the cause of his people, “Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my wrath. You will not drink it any more:
- Isa 51:18–20There is no one to guide her among all the sons to whom she has given birth; and there is no one who takes her by the hand among all the sons who she has brought up.
- Isa 49:19“For, as for your waste and your desolate places, and your land that has been destroyed, surely now that land will be too small for the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away.
- Neh 2:4–9Then the king said to me, “What is your request?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.
- Isa 10:6I will send him against a profane nation, and against the people who anger me will I give him a command to take the plunder and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
- Ezra 1:5Then the heads of fathers’ households of Judah and Benjamin, the priests, and the Levites, all whose spirit God had stirred to go up rose up to build Yahweh’s house which is in Jerusalem.
- Neh 2:17Then I said to them, “You see the bad situation that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come, let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we won’t be disgraced.”
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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 49:17 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.
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.