Through My Bible Yr 01 – December 21

Through My Bible – December 21

Isaiah 17 – 19 (EHV)

See series: Through My Bible

Soon Damascus will no longer be a city.
It will become a heap of ruins.
² The cities of Aroer are forsaken.
They will be places for flocks.
The flocks will lie down,
and no one will make them afraid.
³ The fortress will disappear from Ephraim,
and the kingdom from Damascus.
What remains of Aram will be like the glory of the people of Israel,
    declares the Lord of Armies.
⁴ On that day the glory of Jacob will fade,
and his sturdy body will waste away.
⁵ It will be like the time when a reaper has gathered the standing grain,
and his arm has reaped the heads of grain,
when someone gleans grain in the Valley of Rephaim,
⁶ and a few gleanings are still left there,
or when the branches of an olive tree have been beaten,
and only two or three ripe olives are left on the top of the highest bough,
or four or five remain on the fruitful branches,
declares the Lord, the God of Israel.
⁷ On that day people will trust in their Maker,
and they will look to the Holy One of Israel.
⁸ They will not look to the altars, the work of their own hands.
They will not respect what their fingers have made,
    neither the Asherah poles nor the altars for incense.
⁹ On that day Israel’s strong cities will be
like the forsaken hilltops of the Amorites, ^[1]
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. ^[2]

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.

Isaiah 18

¹ Woe to the land of the whirring wings, along the rivers of Cush. ^[3]

Go, you swift messengers,
to a tall people with smooth, dark skin, ^[4]
to a nation feared far and near,
a nation powerful and conquering, ^[5]
from a land divided by rivers!

³ All you inhabitants of the world,
and you who dwell on the earth,
look for a signal flag raised on the mountains!
Listen for the blast of the ram’s horn!
⁴ For the Lord has said to me,
“I will look on quietly from my dwelling place,
like the shimmering heat of the sun,
like the rising mist at harvest time.”
⁵ For before the harvest,
after the blossom has fallen
and the flower has turned into ripening grapes,
the Lord will cut off the new shoots with pruning hooks,
and he will cut down and remove the longer vines.
⁶ They will all be left for the scavenging birds in the mountains
and for the wild animals in the countryside.
The scavenging birds will feed on them all summer,
and wild animals will feed on them all winter.
⁷ At that time people will give gifts to the Lord of Armies.
These gifts will come from a tall people with smooth, dark skin,
a nation feared far and near,
a nation powerful and conquering,
from a land divided by rivers.
They will bring their gifts to Mount Zion,
the place where the Lord of Armies has put his name.

Look, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud, coming to Egypt!
The worthless idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence,
and the hearts of the Egyptians will melt inside them.
² I will stir up Egyptian against Egyptian,
and they will fight,
    brother against brother,
    neighbor against neighbor,
    city against city,
    and kingdom against kingdom.
³ The spirit in the Egyptians will fail completely.
I will frustrate their plans.
They will turn to their worthless gods, ^[6]
to the spirits of the dead,
to mediums and spiritists.
⁴ But I will hand the Egyptians over to a cruel master,
and a fierce king will rule over them,
declares the Lord, the Lord of Armies.
⁵ The water will dry up from the sea, ^[7]
and the riverbed will dry up completely and be empty.
⁶ The rivers and canals will stink.
The streams in the Nile delta ^[8] will run low and dry up.
Reeds and rushes will wither away.
⁷ The plants that grow beside the Nile, at the mouth of the Nile,
and all the crops planted along the Nile will dry up.
They will blow away and vanish.
⁸ The fishermen will mourn.
All those who cast hooks into the Nile will lament,
and those who spread nets on the waters will grieve.
⁹ Those who work with flax,
the women who comb the flax,
and the men who weave the linen will despair.
¹⁰ Those who make cloth will be crushed.
All the hired workers will lose heart.
¹¹ The officials of Zoan are complete fools.
Pharaoh’s wisest counselors give unreasonable advice.
How can you say to Pharaoh, “I am a son of wise men,
a son of ancient kings”?
¹² Where then are your wise men?
Let them tell you now!
Let them make known what the Lord of Armies
    has planned against Egypt.
¹³ The officials of Zoan act like fools.
The officials of Memphis ^[9] are deceived.
They have caused Egypt to go astray—
these cornerstones of her tribes!
¹⁴ The Lord has poured a confused spirit into them.
They made Egypt go astray in everything it does,
like a drunken man staggering around in his own vomit.
¹⁵ No head or tail, no palm branch or reed,
    will accomplish anything for Egypt.

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.
3. Isaiah 18:1 Cush is the ancient name for the territory south of the First Cataract of the Nile. Called Ethiopia in Roman times, it included most of present-day Sudan and some of present-day Ethiopia.
4. Isaiah 18:2 Literally polished skin
5. Isaiah 18:2 Or a powerful nation with a strange language. The last two lines of the verse are difficult.
6. Isaiah 19:3 Or gods that are not gods
7. Isaiah 19:5 That is, the Nile, which is called a sea because of its size
8. Isaiah 19:6 The Hebrew word for Egypt is usually a dual form, indicating two distinct parts, Upper and Lower Egypt, but here it is singular. It probably refers to lower (that is, northern) Egypt, also known as the Delta, which has many branches of the Nile.
9. Isaiah 19:13 Hebrew Noph. Many of the English names of Egyptian cities are based on the Greek forms of their names.
10. Isaiah 19:18 City of the Sun (‘ir cheres) is the reading of some Hebrew manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah, and the Latin. Many Hebrew manuscripts read City of Destruction (‘ir heres), probably adding a negative twist to the word to avoid honoring the sun god.