# 20 2025 Dev. Isa.17:7. “Turn to God!” Read all of chapter seventeen first. We invite you into God’s space, to read His Word, to think on and interact with. This is God’s Story. Do you believe that this may also be part of our story, in our time? All passages are taken from the NIV.
Isa.17:7 “In that day people will look to their Makerand turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.”
Isaiah 17 “A Prophecy Against Damascus”; that is the title of this chapter but Isaiah also speaks-out against Israel, the 10 tribes that separated from the original Israel. They were aligned with Assyria against Judah.
Vs.1-5 “See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins… The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim…”The devastation is likened to a harvest, leaving nothing standing.
Vs.6-9 “Yet some gleanings will remain… four our five on the fruitful boughs” Again Isaiah uses a harvest metaphor. “In that day” sometime in the future, a statement used to announce the destruction and to announce returning to God; “In that day people will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.” They leave behind their idols and altars. These are Israelites, they may even influence the non Israeli population. But it is done under duress. We should be leaving behind our idols and our fetishes, like horoscopes, satan worship, and other aberrations. We as a people and a country need to turn back to God, if we don’t, we will do it under duress!
Vs.10-14 Here we have the reason for Israel’s demise, “You have forgotten God your Savior; you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.” Isaiah continues with the harvest metaphor, You have planted “imported vines” you have tended them “yet the harvest will be as nothing… Woe to the many nations that rage they rage like the raging sea!” Here Isaiah moves to an ocean metaphor. The Assyrian empire was made up of many nations, God allowed them to take Israel, the 10 tribes, that was their punishment for rejecting the true God for the idol, Sherah, involving immoral practices. Those tribes were scattered and are lost to history, “this is the portion of those who loot us… ” the Assyrians. “in the evening, sudden terror! Before the morning, they are gone!” That is what happened to them after the King consulted Isaiah who prophesied against the Assyrians, 2 Kings 19:35-36 “That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.” God is in control in our country as well. Praise Him!
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Heavenhigh 