Chapter 17:
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Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 Song of Solomon Jeremiah
Isaiah 17
Complete Concise
Syria and Ephriam were confederate against Judah (ch. 7:1, 2),
and, they being so closely linked together in their counsels, this chapter,
though it be entitled "the burden of Damascus" (which was the head
city of Syria), reads the doom of Israel too. I. The destruction of the strong
cities both of Syria and Israel is here foretold (v. 1-5 and v. 9-11). II. In
the midst of judgment mercy is remembered to Israel, and a gracious promise made
that a remnant should be preserved from the calamities and should get good by
them (v. 6-8). III. The overthrow of the Assyrian army before Jerusalem is
pointed at (v. 12-14). In order of time this chapter should be placed next
after ch. 9, for the destruction of Damascus, here foretold, happened in the
reign of Ahaz, 2 Ki. 16:9.
Verses 1-5
We have here the burden of Damascus; the Chaldee paraphrase
reads it,
The burden of the cup of the curse to drink to Damascus in;
and, the ten tribes being in alliance, they must expect to pledge Damascus in
this cup of trembling that is to go round. 1. Damascus itself, the head city of
Syria, must be destroyed; the houses, it is likely, will be burnt, as least the
walls, and gates, and fortifications demolished, and the inhabitants carried
away captive, so that for the present it is
taken away from being a city,
and is reduced not only to a village, but to
a ruinous heap, v. 1. Such
desolating work as this does sin make with cities. 2. The country towns are
abandoned by their inhabitants, frightened or forced away by the invaders:
The
cities of Aroer (a province of Syria so called)
are forsaken (v. 2);
the conquered dare not dwell in them, and the conquerors have no occasion for
them, nor did they seize them for want, but wantonness; so that the places which
should be for men to live in are for
flocks to lie down in, which they
may do, and none will disturb nor dislodge them. Stately houses are converted
into sheep-cotes. It is strange that great conquerors should pride themselves in
being common enemies to mankind. But, how unrighteous soever they are, God is
righteous in causing those cities to spue out their inhabitants, who by their
wickedness had made themselves vile; it is better that
flocks should lie down
there than that they should harbour such as are in open rebellion against
God and virtue. 3. The strongholds of Israel, the kingdom of the ten tribes,
will be brought to ruin:
The fortress shall cease from Ephraim (v. 3),
that in Samaria, and all the rest. They had joined with Syria in invading Judah
very unnaturally; and now those that had been partakers in sin should be made
partakers in ruin, and justly. When
the fortress shall cease from Ephraim,
by which Israel will be weakened, the kingdom will cease from Damascus, by which
Syria will be ruined. The Syrians were the ring-leaders in that confederacy
against Judah, and therefore they are punished first and sorest; and, because
they boasted of their alliance with Israel, now that Israel is weakened they are
upbraided with those boasts:
"The remnant of Syria shall be as the glory
of the children of Israel; those few that remain of the Syrians shall be in
as mean and despicable a condition as the children of Israel are, and the glory
of Israel shall be no relief or reputation to them." Sinful confederacies
will be no strength, no stay, to the confederates, when God's judgments come
upon them. See here what the glory of Jacob is when God contends with him, and
what little reason Syria will have to be proud of resembling the glory of Jacob.
(1.) It is wasted like a man in a consumption, v. 4.
The glory of Jacob
was their numbers, that they were as the sand of the sea for multitude; but this
glory
shall be made thin, when many are cut off, and few left. Then the
fatness
of their flesh, which was their pride and security,
shall was lean,
and the body of the people shall become a perfect skeleton, nothing but skin and
bones. Israel died of a lingering disease; the kingdom of the ten tribes wasted
gradually; God was to them
as a moth, Hos. 5:12. Such is all the glory of
this world: it soon withers, and is made thin; but thee is a far more exceeding
and external weight of glory designed for the spiritual seed of Jacob, which is
not subject to any such decay—fatness of God's house, which will not
wax
lean. (2.) It is all gathered and carried away by the Assyrian army, as the
corn is carried out of the field by the husbandmen, v. 5. The corn is the glory
of the fields (Ps. 65:13); but, when it is reaped and gone, where is the glory?
The people had by their sins made themselves ripe for ruin, and their glory was
as quickly, as easily, as justly, and as irresistibly, cut down and taken away,
as the corn is out of the field by the husbandman. God's judgments are
compared to the
thrusting in of the sickle when the harvest is ripe, Rev.
14:15. And the victorious army, like the careful husbandmen in the valley of
Rephaim, where the corn was extraordinary, would not, if they could help it,
leave an ear behind, would lose nothing that they could lay their hands on.
Verses 6-8
Mercy is here reserved, in a parenthesis, in the midst of
judgment, for a remnant that should escape the common ruin of the kingdom of the
ten tribes. Though the Assyrians took all the care they could that none should
slip out of their net, yet the meek of the earth were hidden in the day of the
Lord's anger, and had their lives given them for a prey and made comfortable
to them by their retirement to the land of Judah, where they had the liberty of
God's courts. 1. They shall be but a small remnant, a very few, who shall be
marked for preservation (v. 6):
Gleaning grapes shall be left in it. The
body of the people were carried into captivity, but here and there one was left
behind, perhaps one of two in a bed when the other was taken, Lu. 17:34. The
most desolating judgments in this world are short of the last judgment, which
shall be universal and which none shall escape. In times of the greatest
calamity some are kept safe, as in times of the greatest degeneracy some are
kept pure. But the fewness of those that escape supposes the captivity of the
far greatest part; those that are left are but like the poor remains of an olive
tree when it has been carefully shaken by the owner; if there be
two or three
berries in the top of the uppermost bough (out of the reach of those that
shook it), that is all. Such is the
remnant according to the election of
grace, very few in comparison with the multitudes that walk on in the broad
way. 2. They shall be a sanctified remnant, v. 7, 8. These few that are
preserved are such as, in the prospect of the judgment approaching, had repented
of their sins and reformed their lives, and therefore were snatched thus as
brands out of the burning, or such as having escaped, and becoming refugees in
strange countries, were awakened, partly by a sense of the distinguishing mercy
of their deliverance, and partly by the distresses they were still in, to return
to God. (1.) They shall look up to their Creator, shall enquire,
Where is God
my Maker, who giveth songs in the night, in such a night of affliction as
this? Job 35:10, 11. They shall acknowledge his hand in all the events
concerning them, merciful and afflictive, and shall submit to his hand. They
shall give him the glory due to his name, and be suitably affected with his
providences. They shall expect relief and succour from him and depend upon him
to help them. Their
eyes shall have respect to him,
as the eyes of a
servant to the hand of his master, Ps. 123:2. Observe, It is our duty at all
times to have respect to God, to have our eyes ever towards him, both as our
Maker (the author of our being and the God of nature) and as the Holy One of
Israel, a God in covenant with us and the God of grace; particularly, when we
are in affliction, our eyes must be towards the Lord, to
pluck our feet out
of the net (Ps. 25:15); to bring us to this is the design of his providence
as he is our Maker and the work of his grace as he is the Holy One of Israel.
(2.) They shall look off from their idols, the creatures of their own fancy,
shall no longer worship them, and seek to them, and expect relief from them. For
God will be alone regarded, or he does not look upon himself as at all regarded.
He that looks to his Maker must not
look to the altars, the work of his
hands, but disown them and cast them off, must not retain the least respect
for
that which his fingers have made, but break it to pieces, though it
be his own workmanship—
the groves and the images; the word signifies
images made in honour of the sun and by which he was worshipped, the most
ancient and most plausible idolatry, Deu. 4:19; Job 31:26. We have reason to
account those happy afflictions which part between us and our sins, and by
sensible convictions of the vanity of the world, that great idol, cool our
affections to it and lower our expectations from it.
Verses 9-11
Here the prophet returns to foretel the woeful desolations that
should be made in the land of Israel by the army of the Assyrians. 1. That the
cities should be deserted. Even the strong cities, which should have protected
the country, shall not be able to protect themselves: They
shall be as a
forsaken bough and an uppermost branch of an old tree, which has gone to
decay, is forsaken of its leaves, and appears on the top of the tree, bare, and
dry, and dead; so shall their strong cities look when the inhabitants have
deserted them and the victorious army of the enemy pillaged and defaced them, v.
9. They shall be as the cities (so it may be supplied) which the Canaanites
left, the old inhabitants of the land, because of the children of Israel, when
God brought them in with a high hand, to take possession of that good land,
cities which they built not. As the Canaanites then fled before Israel, so
Israel should now flee before the Assyrians. And herein the word of God was
fulfilled, that, if they committed the same abominations,
the land should
spue them out, as it spued out the nations that were before them (Lev.
18:28), and that as, while they had God on their side,
one of them chased a
thousand, so, when they had made him their enemy,
a thousand of them
should
flee at the rebuke of one; so that in the cities should be
desolation, according to the threatenings in the law, Lev. 26:31; Deu. 28:51. 2.
That the country should be laid waste, v. 10, 11. Observe here, (1.) The sin
that had provoked God to bring so great a destruction upon that pleasant land.
It was
for the iniquity of those that dwelt therein. "It is
because
thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation and all the great salvations he
has wrought for thee, hast forgotten thy dependence upon him and obligations to
him, and
hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, not only who
is himself a strong rock, but who has been thy strength many a time, or thou
wouldst have been sunk and broken long since." Note, The God of our
salvation is the rock of our strength; and our forgetfulness and unmindfulness
of him are at the bottom of all sin.
Therefore have we
perverted our
way, because we have forgotten the Lord our God, and so we undo ourselves.
(2.) The destruction itself, aggravated by the great care they took to improve
their land and to make it yet more pleasant. [1.] Look upon it at the time of
the seedness, and it was all like a garden and a vineyard; that pleasant land
was replenished with pleasant plants, the choicest of its own growth; nay, so
nice and curious were the inhabitants that, not content with them, they sent to
all the neighbouring countries for strange slips, the more valuable for being
strange, uncommon, far-fetched, and dear-bought, though perhaps they had of
their own not inferior to them. This was an instance of their pride and vanity,
and (that ruining error) their affection to be
like the nations. Wheat, and
honey, and oil were their staple commodities (Eze. 27:17); but, not content
with these, they must have flowers and greens with strange names imported from
other nations, and a great deal of care and pains must be taken by hot-beds to
make these plants to grow; the soil must be forced, and they must be covered
with glasses to shelter them, and early in the morning the gardeners must be up
to make the seed to flourish, that it may excel those of their neighbours. The
ornaments of nature are not to be altogether slighted, but it is a folly to be
over-fond of them, and to bestow more time, and cost, and pains about them than
they deserve, as many do. But here this instance seems to be put in general for
their great industry in cultivating their ground, and their expectations from it
accordingly; they doubt not but their plants will grow and flourish. But, [2.]
Look upon the same ground at the time of harvest, and it is all like a
wilderness, a dismal melancholy place, even to the spectators, much more to the
owners; for
the harvest shall be a heap, all in confusion,
in the day
of grief and of desperate sorrow. The harvest used to be a time of joy, of
singing and shouting (ch. 16:10); but this harvest the hungry eat up (Job 5:5),
which makes it a day of grief, and the more because the plants were pleasant and
costly (v. 10) and their expectations proportionably raised. The harvest had
sometimes been a day of grief, if the crop was thin and the weather
unseasonable; and yet in that case there was hope that the next would be better.
But this shall be desperate sorrow, for they shall see not only this year's
products carried off, but the property of the ground altered and their
conquerors lords of it. The margin reads it,
The harvest shall be removed
(into the enemy's country or camp, Deu. 28:33)
in the day of inheritance
(when thou thoughtest to inherit it),
and there shall be deadly sorrow.
This is a good reason why we should not lay up our treasure in those things
which we may so quickly be despoiled of, but in that good part which shall never
be taken away from us.
Verses 12-14
These verses read the doom of those that spoil and rob the
people of God. If the Assyrians and Israelites invade and plunder Judah, if the
Assyrian army take God's people captive and lay their country waste, let them
know that ruin will be their lot and portion. They are here brought in, 1.
Triumphing over the people of God. They relied upon their numbers. The Assyrian
army was made up out of divers nations: it was
the multitude of many people
(v. 12), by which weight they hoped to carry the cause. They were very noisy,
like the roaring of the seas; they talked big, hectored, and threatened, to
frighten God's people from resisting them, and all their allies from sending
in to their aid. Sennacherib and Rabshakeh, in their speeches and letters, made
a mighty noise to strike a terror upon Hezekiah and his people; the nations that
followed them
made a rushing like the rushing of many waters, and those
mighty ones, that threaten to bear down all before them and carry away every
thing that stands in their way.
The floods have lifted up their voice, have
lifted up their waves; such is the tumult of the people, and the heathen,
when they rage, Ps. 2:1; 93:3. 2. Triumphed over by the judgments of God. They
thought to carry their point by dint of noise; but woe to them (v. 12), for he
shall
rebuke them, that is, God shall, one whom they little think of, have no
regard to, stand in no awe of; he shall give them a check with an invisible
hand,
and then
they shall flee afar off. Sennacherib, and
Rabshakeh, and the remains of their forces, shall run away in a fright, and
shall be chased by their own terrors,
as the chaff of the mountains which
stand bleak
before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind,
like thistle-down (so the margin); they make themselves
as chaff before the
wind (Ps. 35:5) and then
the angel of the Lord (as it follows there),
the same angel that slew many of them, shall chase the rest. God will make
them
like a wheel, or rolling thing, and then
persecute them with his tempest
and
make them afraid with his storm, Ps. 83:13, 15. Note, God can
dispirit the enemies of his church when they are most courageous and confident,
and dissipate them when they seem most closely consolidated. This shall be done
suddenly (v. 14):
At evening-tide they are very troublesome, and threaten
trouble to the people of God; but
before the morning they are not. At
sleeping time they are cast into a deep sleep, Ps. 26:5, 6. It was in the night
that the angel routed the Assyrian army. God can in a moment break the power of
his church's enemies, even when it appears most formidable; and this is
written for the encouragement of the people of God in all ages, when they find
themselves an unequal match for their enemies; for
this is the portion of
those that spoil us, they shall themselves be spoiled. God will plead his
church's cause, and those that meddle do it to their own hurt.
Chapter 17:
| Darby
| Geneva
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Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 Song of Solomon Jeremiah
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