Isaiah 17

World English Bible 84 include this book

1 The burden of Damascus. “Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it will be a ruinous heap.

2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken. They will be for flocks, which shall lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.

3 The fortress shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria. They will be as the glory of the children of Israel,” says the LORD of Armies.

4 “It will happen in that day that the glory of Jacob will be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh will become lean.

5 It will be like when the harvester gathers the wheat, and his arm reaps the grain. Yes, it will be like when one gleans grain in the valley of Rephaim.

6 Yet gleanings will be left there, like the shaking of an olive tree, two or three olives in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outermost branches of a fruitful tree,” says the LORD, the God of Israel.

7 In that day, people will look to their Maker, and their eyes will have respect for the Holy One of Israel.

8 They will not look to the altars, the work of their hands; neither shall they respect that which their fingers have made, either the Asherah poles or the incense altars.

9 In that day, their strong cities will be like the forsaken places in the woods and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel; and it will be a desolation.

10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not remembered the rock of your strength. Therefore you plant pleasant plants, and set out foreign seedlings.

11 In the day of your planting, you hedge it in. In the morning, you make your seed blossom, but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.

12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples who roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing of nations that rush like the rushing of mighty waters!

13 The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters, but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far off, and will be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm.

14 At evening, behold, terror! Before the morning, they are no more. This is the portion of those who plunder us, and the lot of those who rob us.

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2 places named in this chapter.

Where this was written

Jerusalem attested Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem across the Assyrian crisis.

Babylon disputed Chapters 40 onward address the exiles and are usually placed in Babylonia.

When this was written

Traditions differ. Each position is shown rather than one asserted as settled.

Traditional: 740 BC–681 BC Isaiah of Jerusalem
The whole book is ascribed to the 8th-century prophet, with later chapters read as predictive.
Critical: 740 BC–500 BC Isaiah and later hands
Chapters 40 onward presuppose the Babylonian exile and name Cyrus, which most critical scholars take as evidence of 6th-century authorship.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (740 BC–500 BC).

1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
750 BC–650 BC Homeric epics take written form Greece
The Iliad and Odyssey were fixed in writing after generations of oral transmission.
745 BC–609 BC Neo-Assyrian empire at its height Mesopotamia
Assyria dominated the Near East, deporting conquered populations as policy, including the northern kingdom of Israel.
722 BC Fall of Samaria Levant
The Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel and the deportation of much of its population.
620 BC–560 BC Coinage invented in Lydia Anatolia
Stamped electrum coins of guaranteed weight, an idea that spread across the ancient world within a century.
600 BC–500 BC Daoism takes shape in China China
The teaching associated with Laozi, emphasising harmony with the natural order.

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