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On that day Israel’s strong cities will be
like the forsaken hilltops of the Amorites,[a]
like the places that were abandoned when the people of Israel
    first came.
They will be desolate.

10 You have forgotten the God who saves you.
You have not remembered the Rock who is your strength.
Therefore, although you set out the best quality plants,
and you plant cuttings from imported vines,
11 and you put a fence around them on the day you plant them,
and you get your seed to sprout in the morning,
nevertheless, the harvest will come to nothing
    in the day of grief and desperate sorrow.[b]

12 Oh, the roar of many peoples!
They roar like the raging seas.
Oh, the uproar of nations!
It sounds like huge, crashing waves!
13 The nations will roar like the crashing of great waves,
but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away.
They will be driven off the mountains like wind-blown chaff,
like a tumbleweed blown about in a storm.
14 In the evening, terror rushes in!
Before morning they are gone.
This will be the reward for those who plunder us,
the lot of those who rob us.

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 17:9 The Hebrew reads like the abandonment of the wooded height and the top one. The Greek Old Testament reads the forsaken places of the Amorites and Horites.
  2. Isaiah 17:11 These verses are difficult and translations vary.

On that day, its fortified cities[a] will be like the abandonment of the wooded place and the summit,[b] which they deserted because of the children of Israel; and there will be desolation.

10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation,
    and you have not remembered the rock of your refuge;
therefore you plant plants of pleasantness,
    and you plant[c] a vine of a foreigner.
11 On your planting day you make them grow,
    and in the morning of your sowing you bring them into bloom,
yet the harvest will flee[d] in a day of sickness and incurable pain.

The Roar of the Peoples

12 Ah! The noise of many peoples, they make a noise like the noise of the seas!
    And the roar of nations, they roar like the roar of mighty waters!
13 The nations roar like the roar of many waters,
    but he will rebuke him, and he will flee far away.
And they are chased like chaff of the mountains before the wind
    and like tumbleweed before the storm.
14 At the time of evening, and look, terror!
    Before morning he is no more.
This is the fate of those who plunder us
    and the lot of those who plunder us.

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 17:9 Literally “the cities of his fortress”
  2. Isaiah 17:9 Perhaps this difficult phrase originally read “abandonment of the wooded heights of the Amorites”
  3. Isaiah 17:10 Literally “plant it”
  4. Isaiah 17:11 Reading the same consonants as a verb, nad, rather than the noun ned, which would mean “a heap ofthe harvest”