Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 17:10
Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips:
10. God of thy salvation ] The only occasion on which this important term (Heb. yesha‘) is used by Isaiah, although it forms an element of his own name.
rock of thy strength ] A very frequent name of God, cf. ch. Isa 30:29, Isa 44:8 (R.V.); Deuteronomy 32. (passim); Psa 19:14; Psa 27:5; Psa 31:2-3, &c.
shalt thou plant pleasant plants ] R.V. marg. gives thou plantest plantings of Adonis. The supposed reference is to the Adonis-gardens mentioned by Greek writers (see Plato, Phaedrus 276). They were “pots of quickly withering flowers which the ancients used to set at their doors or in the courts of temples.” It cannot be denied that such an allusion furnishes the most striking image conceivable of the futility of all human projects which (like the Syro-Ephraimitish alliance) are not grounded in the eternal moral purpose of Jehovah. The question is whether it is a fair interpretation of the text. Now, there are a number of scattered proofs, slight but very interesting, that the Syrian deity known to the Greeks as Adonis, actually bore the name here rendered “pleasantness” ( Na‘mn). It has been suggested, e.g. that the anemone, the flower sacred to Adonis, derives its name from this title of the god; and in Arabic the red anemone is called by a name which is explained to mean “wounds of Adonis.” For other arguments see Cheyne’s Comm. and the references there. Adonis being a Syrian deity, his worship in Israel was a necessary consequence of the alliance with Damascus. His worship was practised chiefly by women, Eze 8:14. The rendering may at least be accepted as giving significance to a metaphor which is otherwise somewhat colourless.
set it with strange slips ] or, plant it with vine-branches of a strange (god); see Num 13:23; Nah 2:2.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Because thou … – Because the kingdom of Israel or Samaria had done it.
The God of thy salvation – The God in whom alone was salvation; or who alone could protect thee (compare Mic 7:7; Hos 2:15).
The rock of thy strength – God. A rock of strength is a strongly fortified place; or a rock which an enemy could not successfully assail. High rocks were selected as a place of refuge from an invading foe (see the notes at Isa 1:10, Isa 1:21). In allusion to this, God is often called a Rock, and a strong tower Deu 32:4, Deu 32:15, Deu 32:18, Deu 32:30-31, Deu 32:37; 1Sa 2:2; 2Sa 22:2-3, 2Sa 22:32; Psa 18:31, Psa 18:46; Psa 19:14; Psa 28:1; Psa 30:1-2.
Shalt thou plant pleasant plants – Plants that are suited to produce pleasure or delight; that is, you shall cultivate your fields, and set them out with choice vines and plants in hope of a future harvest, but you shall be disappointed.
And shall set it with strange slips – The word slips means the cuttings of the vine that are set in the ground to grow; or the shoot or sucker that is taken off and set out, or put in the earth to take root and grow, as is often done by farmers and gardeners. The word strange here means foreign, those which are procured from a distance, and which are, therefore, esteemed valuable; plants selected with care. This does not mean, as Lowth supposes, strange and idolatrous worship, and the vicious practices connected with it; but it means that, though they should be at great pains and expense in cultivating their land, yet the enemy would come in and make it desolate.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 17:10-11
Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation.
Forgetfulness of God punished
I. THE MAGNITUDE OF THE SIN HERE SPOKEN OF. Forgetfulness of God.
1. What is this forgetfulness of God? It has been defined as such a habitual inattention to His existence and character, as leads the individual under its influence to a mode of thinking, feeling, and acting, which would be consistent only on the supposition that there were no God, or that God is a very different Being from what the Scriptures represent Him to be.
2. It is a startling sin. Everything around us is designed and fitted to remind us of God. The Bible unfolds the moral character of God. Sharp dispensations of providence remind us of His existence. Preachers enforce His claims. Each returning Sabbath, with its closed shutters, the sound of the church going bell, and the voice of praise from the lips of the pious, says, Worship God. But many would rather think about anything, or nothing, than about God.
3. It is a fearfully prevalent sin.
4. It is an ungrateful sin (Isa 1:2-3).
5. It is a highly punishable sin. Many people imagine that none are sinners but those who openly sin. But what of the moral man, who does his duty towards his fellow men, but who forgets God?
II. THE RESULTS OF THIS FORGETFULNESS OF GOD.
1. Dwarfed powers. Men cannot, if they wish, be totally inactive. If activity be not devoted to God, it will be devoted to the world, to planting pleasant plants.
2. Secular knowledge is a pleasant plant.
3. Wealth is a pleasant plant.
4. Ambition is a pleasant plant.
5. Amusement is a pleasant plant.
6. Hence observe the ultimate result of this conduct. The harvest shall be a heap, etc. Sooner or later men reap what they sow. Sin and suffering are bound together by an unbreakable chain. The gods are just, says Shakespeare, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us. Gal 6:7-8.) Men break Gods physical laws, and they suffer in their bodies and circumstances. They violate His moral laws, and personal debasement ensues. George Eliot says, That is the bitterest of all–to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing. (H. Woodcock.)
Evils of forgetting God
I. FORGETFULNESS OF GOD IS AN EVIL WHICH TOO GENERALLY PREVAILS AMONG MEN. The text does not so much charge with positive wickedness (though it is implied) as forgetfulness of God, which supposes folly, because He is the God of salvation, and the Rock of strength. Consider these relations–
1. The God of thy salvation.
(1) He is infinitely able to save His creatures, whether the salvation required be temporal, spiritual, or eternal.
(2) He is always willing to save them. How inexcusable is maul
How criminal to forget, to be unmindful of Him!
2. The Rock of thy strength. Here we may build, and the fabric will never be shaken. Here we may shelter, as in the cleft of a rock, and no evil shall prevail against us. For so helpless and weak a creature as man to have such a refuge, such a support, and to be unmindful of it, how great is his folly! But when may we be said to forget, and to be unmindful of God? When we live without thinking of Him–without praying to Him–without seeking His glory–without surrendering our souls, bodies, and all our cares into His hands.
II. THE ATTENTION THUS DRAWN FROM GOD AND HIS SERVICE IS TRANSFERRED TO WORLDLY AND SENSUAL PLEASURES. The soul of man in this case strives to supply its want of happiness from the world: therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants. Infinitely varied are the objects of the attention or culture of men, but they all proceed from the above principle, or rather have the same end in view. Some seek their pleasure in learning, others in the arts, riches, honours, employments, amusements. But they are strange slips, not natural, not designed to answer the intended purpose. The sons of men are determined to prove what the world can do for them. In the day THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH CONDUCT. The harvest shall be a heap, etc. (J. Walker, D. D.)
Prosperity in the seeming only
These occasional sun gleams may foretoken the thunderstorm. God can mock, God can lead the bullock to the knife by the way of a fat pasture. There is, therefore, a promise here, but the promise is limited. You shall have mushroom growths, you shall see wonderful things within the span of a single day; but what shall the harvest be? The meaning is, we may be infatuated by appearances, by immediate successes, by flowers and strange slips growing up within the compass of one little day. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Gods righteousness in His dealings with men
Happily, this is only one aspect of the Divine government; we are entitled to reverse this text, and say, Because thou hast remembered the God of thy salvation, and hast been mindful of the Rock of thy strength, therefore shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses burst out with new wine. Thou hast not withheld from God the gladness and the service of thine heart, and He will not withhold from thee the music and the rapture and the abundance of harvest.. The way of the Lord is equal. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Pleasant plants and strange slips
They made for themselves all kinds of sensuous cults in conformity with their heathen inclination. (F. Delitzsch.)
The temporary success of an evil alliance
The foreign slip has shot up like a hothouse plant, i.e., the alliance has rapidly become a happy agreement, and has also already shot forth a blossom, which is the common plan directed against Judah. (F. Delitzsch.)
Lives of disappointment
The world is full of people who are engaged in planting their slips. Fortunes, luxurious homes, great reputations–such are some of the slips; but what disappointment succeeds–desperate sorrow. The egg turns cue to be rottenness; the fair landscape a Sahara, from which the mirage is gone; the beautiful globe of changing colour, only a drop of dirty soap and water. We remember the story of Faust, who sold himself to Satan, but the day of bitter reaping came. We remember the cry of Byron over his wasted years; of Laurence Oliphant, the bright versatile son of Piccadilly, who in his varied career had tasted life in many of its brightest aspects; of Solomon, whose Ecclesiastes is one long record of slip planting. Nothing less than God, our Maker, can suffice the souls which He has made. Apart from Him life may at first promise well, but the end, inevitably, will be desperate sorrow. (P. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The harvest shall be a heap
The harvest of sorrow
A harvest field is a suggestive place.
I. TO EVERY LIFE THERE IS A HARVEST, EITHER OF JOY OR OF SORROW. Life on earth is introductory and probationary. It is but the seed time for eternity. All our actions, words, thoughts, have a bearing upon the future. God is our moral Governor, as well as our loving Father. We are, therefore, accountable to Him for the disposal of every moment of our existence. Belonging to a depraved and fallen race, we are necessarily sinners; but this has been provided for. To every life there is a harvest. When? Sometimes in this world. Both the righteous and the wicked reap on earth to a certain degree that which they have sown. But still it is most strictly true that the great and final harvest commences when life on earth terminates and life in eternity begins. This great fact invests life with unspeakable grandeur. Every day and hour we are preparing for the realities of eternity. This should moderate our expectations concerning the present life. That which is probationary is necessarily incomplete. We should, therefore, expect trials and disappointments.
II. THE HARVEST OF SORROW MAY, IN EVERY CASE, BE TRACED TO ONE GREAT CAUSE–forgetfulness of God. The ruin of the Ten Tribes is traced to this (Isa 17:10-11). Jeremiah brings the same charge against them Jer 2:12-13). Hosea also says (Hos 8:14), For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples. At first, it seems impossible that they could ever have done this. Had they not the history of the great and eventful past? Did they not know they were depending on Him for everything they enjoyed? Surely, those who had such a God should never have forgotten Him. The fact stated in the text is one of deep significance. It shows us the desperate wickedness of the human heart. The Israelites were so estranged from Jehovah that they acted as though He did not exist. It is so in every such case. Forgetfulness of God always leads to this terrible result. No one can be unmindful of Him with impunity. Forgetfulness of God produces in the heart such feelings and induces men to follow such a line of conduct, that their lives must be a failure. It is, however, worthy of notice, that these persons are as anxious to be happy during life, and at its end, as any of their fellows. They do not resign themselves to despair. On the contrary, they fancy that all is well. Their hearts beat high with hope. True, they have not the help and protection which the Lords people enjoy, but they do all they can to supply its place. The people of Israel did all they could to make their position a strong one. They made an alliance with Syria, and thought, with her help, they would be able to overcome their foes. So men in the present day, who forget God, avail themselves of the dictates of worldly prudence. In the day they make their plant to grow, and in the evening they make their seed to flourish. Here we have an affecting description of the anxiety and feverish effort of the men that know not God. We may plant pleasant plants, we may set strange slips, but they will not compensate us for the absence of the plants of righteousness. He who forgets the God of his salvation, and is unmindful of the Rock of his strength, must be without His favour, and at last must reap a harvest of grief and desperate sorrow.
III. THE HARVEST OF SORROW INVOLVES THE SOUL IN UTTER AND IRREMEDIABLE RUIN. It is no slight matter–it is the loss of all things or the failure of every effort–the disappointment of every hope, the destruction of every joy, the development and perpetuation of every sorrow. The language of the prophet is very striking. The common idea of harvest is that of a joyous nature. But here we have an idea of the very opposite character. The harvest is a heap. There is no golden grain worthy of being housed in everlasting habitations. The soul sees with amazement that all her efforts have been fruitless, and cries, Is this all; has my life on earth produced nothing more than this? And the answer is, Nothing more; and that which it has produced is only fit for the burning. (H. B.Ingram.)
Gods love in the deprivations of life
There is only one way of getting at some men. Once we could have appealed to their higher nature; once they were subject to the pleasure and the eloquence of reason; once they had a conscience tender, sensitive, responsive; now they are spiritually dead, no conscience, no reason, no unselfishness; the whole nature has gone down in volume and in quality into a terrible emaciation: what shall be done? Smite their harvest! then like beasts they will miss their food. God does not delight in this; it is the poorest violence, it is the feeblest department of His providence; but He knows that it is the only providence some men can understand. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Reclamation by punishment
God got you back to the Church through inflammation, through fever, through paralysis, through pain, through loss, through desolation; you came back over the graveyard. No matter, said God; when He got you into His house again He said, This My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. It is in the reclamation, not in the punishment, that God takes pleasure. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 10. Strange slips – “Shoots from a foreign soil.”] The pleasant plants, and shoots from a foreign soil, are allegorical expressions for strange and idolatrous worship; vicious and abominable practices connected with it; reliance on human aid, and on alliances entered into with the neighbouring nations, especially Egypt; to all which the Israelites were greatly addicted, and in their expectations from which they should be grievously disappointed.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thou, O Israel. The Rock of thy strength; that God Who was thy only sure defence.
Pleasant plants; excellent flowers and fruit trees.
Strange slips; fetched from far countries. and therefore highly esteemed. The sense is, Thou shalt use much industry and cost, but to no purpose, as it follows.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. forgotten . . . God of . . .salvation . . . rock (Deu 32:15;Deu 32:18).
plantsrather, “nurserygrounds,” “pleasure-grounds” [MAURER].
set inrather, “setthem,” the pleasure-grounds.
strange slipscuttingsof plants from far, and therefore valuable.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation,…. Who had been the author of salvation to them many a time, in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in various instances since; and yet they had forgot his works of mercy and goodness, and had left his worship, and gone after idols; and this was the cause of their cities being forsaken, and becoming a desolation:
and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength; or strong Rock, who had supplied and supported them, protected and defended them:
therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants; or “plants of pleasant fruit” s, or “plants of Naamanim”; and so Aben Ezra takes it to be the proper name of a plant in the Arabic language, and which he says is a plant that grows very quick; perhaps he means “Anemone”, which is so called in that language t, and is near to it in sound; though rather, not any particular plant is meant, but all sorts of pleasant plants, flowers, and fruit trees, with which the land of Israel abounded:
and shall set it with strange slips; with foreign ones, such as are brought from other countries, and are scarce and dear, and highly valued; and by “plants” and “slips” may be meant false and foreign doctrines, inculcating idolatry and superstition, which are pleasing to the flesh u.
s “plantas amaenorum [fructuum]”, Piscator. t Alnaaman “Anemone”, in Avicenna, l. 256. 1. “vel a colore sanguineo, vel quod ab illo adamaretur rege”, Golius, col. 2409. Castel. col. 2346. u So Vitringa.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
10. Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation. He shews the reason why the Lord exercises such severity against the Ten Tribes, that they may not complain of being unjustly afflicted or too harshly treated. The sum of what is stated is, that all those evils come to them because they have wickedly despised God. It was excessively base and altogether inexcusable ingratitude, after having received so many favors, to prostitute their hopes to heathen nations and to idols, as if they had never in any respect experienced the love of God. Indeed, no unbelievers, when they are called to account, will vindicate themselves from the charge of offering an insult to God by wandering after creatures. But the argument was applicable, in a special manner, to the people of Israel, to whom God had revealed himself in such a manner that they ought to have left off all the impostures of the world and relied on his grace alone. They are therefore justly accused of ingratitude, for having buried in forgetfulness the object of true faith; and indeed, when God has once allowed us to taste the delight of his goodness, if it gain a place in our hearts, we shall never be drawn away from it to anything else. Hence it follows that they are convicted of ingratitude who, not being satisfied with the true God, are unsteady and driven about in all directions; for in this manner they despise his invaluable grace.
Accordingly, the Prophet expressly calls him the God of salvation and the God or Rock of strength צור ( tsūr) has both significations; for it was a monstrous thing that they were not kept in fidelity to God, who had so often preserved them, and, as it were, with an outstretched hand. When he adds that they had not been mindful, this is an amplification; for he indirectly charges them with base slothfulness in not considering in how many ways they had formerly been made to know the kindness of God.
Therefore thou shalt plant. Next follows the punishment, that they might not think that this ingratitude would remain unpunished. That is, because they forsook the fountain of all good, though they labor to obtain food, yet they will be consumed by famine and hunger; for all that shall be obtained with great labor the enemy will either carry away or destroy. This passage is taken from Moses; for it is a curse pronounced amidst other curses.
“
The fruit of thy land, and all thy labors, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up.” (Deu 28:33).
Hence we see what I have often mentioned before, that the prophets borrow many things from Moses, and are the true interpreters of the law. He speaks of choice vines and branches taken from them; because the greatness of the loss aggravates the sorrow.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
FORGETFULNESS OF GOD
Isa. 17:10-11. Because thou hast forgotten, &c.
I. It is possible to forget the God of our salvation.
1. The majority of men habitually forget Him. He very seldom holds a real and commanding place in the hearts of any of us. We are all prone to have our hearts wholly filled with the cares or pleasures of life. Even if our aims be in themselves lawful, we seldom recognise God in framing or prosecuting them. Hence the shock which the thought of Gods nearness gives us in times of calamity, sickness, or expected death. The very shock shows that we are open to the prophets charge.
2. This forgetfulness of God, to which we are all so prone, should be recognised to be a state of peril and guilt. Who is so near to us as God? who so essential to us? who has so many claims upon our grateful and continued remembrance? To be forgetful of Him is a sin of which we should think with shame.
II. This forgetfulness of God leads to false trusts. The throne of our heart cannot remain vacant; if God be not there, unworthy objects will surely take His place. The pleasant plants and foreign shoots (or strange slips) here represent the pursuit of lust and idolatry, and that fatal reliance on human help which is so often denounced (chap. Isa. 2:22; Jer. 17:5). The sin denounced by the prophet has not become obsolete. All round about us are men who have forgotten God, and are seeking and putting their trust in pleasure, pomp, money, or knowledge. There is a pursuit of knowledge, even a science falsely so called that deliberately excludes God from its range, and pronounces Him unknowable! These are the things for which men live, to which they devote all they are and have, from which they look for the happiness for which their hearts crave; these are their gods! Forgetfulness of God necessarily leads to idolatry in some form or other; desires and tendencies, in themselves right when under right control, become occasions of guilt; God is shifted from the centre of operations, and the trust of men fixes itself inevitably on unworthy objects (H. E. I., 39).
III. These false trusts lead to bitter disappointments. The harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow. At the very time when abundance of fruit was expected, nothing awaits the anxious toiler but disappointment and failure. Mildew, or blight, or drought, or fire has done its deadly work, and nothing is left but rotting masses, heaps of useless and decaying vegetation. What a sad picture! barrenness and dearth where there should be life and plenty! Yet this is a true picture of the fate of many who have persisted in their rejection of God, and in their clinging to false hopes. A life dedicated to fashion, pleasure, money-getting, or worldly ambition, necessarily ends in a reaping-time of blighted hopes, of darkened prospects, of remorse and despair (H. E. I., 246248, 50215025; P. D., 138, 162, 255, 3592).
1. This result of a godless life will be found even in those cases where all the good that was striven after has been realised; the heart is still left unsatisfied (Ecc. 1:12 to Ecc. 2:17).
2. Desperate sorrow is the natural result of discovering that the time for securing a profitable harvest is gone (Jer. 8:20; P. D., 2254).
Earnestly consider Gods claims upon you; renounce all false trusts; sow for that harvest in which there can be no real disappointment (Gal. 6:6). Redeem the time that yet remains; to the worst of us a gracious promise is still held out (Mal. 3:7; Psa. 116:7).William Manning.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(10) Hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength.Jehovah, as the true defence, the fortress rock of His people (Deu. 32:4), is contrasted with the rock-fortresses in which the people had put their trust. They had forsaken the One, and therefore, by a just retribution, the others should be forsaken.
Therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants.Better, thou didst plant. The word for pleasant is found here only as a common noun. The singular appears as a proper name in Gen. 46:21, Num. 26:40, and in the more familiar instance of Naaman the Syrian (2Ki. 5:1). It would appear that the prophet chose the peculiar term to indicate the foreign, in this case the Syrian, character of the worship to which he refers as the plant which Israel had adopted. Mr. Cheyne, following an ingenious suggestion of Lagardes, connects it (1) with the Arabic Nahr Noman, the name of the river Belus near Acre, and (2) with the Arabic name (Shakaiku-n-nomn) for the red anemone. The former was near the head-quarters of the worship of Thammuz, the Phnician Adonis, and the flower was sacred to him, and so it is inferred that the prophet refers to the gardens of Adonis, fair but perishable (Plato, Phdr. p. 276 B), in which Israel had delighted (Eze. 8:14). The addition of strange slips, literally, vine-slips of a strange onei.e., of a strange god (comp. Jer. 2:21)confirms at least the general drift of this interpretation.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
10. Because thou Ephraim, Israel.
Hast forgotten salvation Explanation of the preceding verse. The Israelites were to be punished as there described. But the other result was to follow first, namely, they fell into idolatry.
Not been mindful Rock of thy strength The Lord, Jehovah. Weary of the wholesome discipline of serving him, they pandered to the lustful pleasures of a false religion. They plant pleasant plants, or pleasant plantations, perhaps groves for illicit pleasures connected with idolatrous worship, for to this view the next phrase allies itself.
Set it with strange slips In the midst of their idolatrous garden-grounds they inserted vines from Syria and Damascus. Ephraim sought help and protection from Damascus and Syria rather than from Jehovah, his own covenant God.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Penitence and Punishment
Isa 17:10-11
That is the loss we have all to mourn. Why do we grieve over merest trifles? The thing to mourn over is spiritual loss, heart-alienation from God. We are given to tears: why do we not weep over the right causes; why misspend our sorrows? The literal, solemn, universal fact is that we have gone away from God; then why cry about something secondary and superficial? Why afflict ourselves about symptoms, whilst the cruel persistent disease is feeding on the vitals of our very heart? Yet men will thus befool themselves to themselves and before God. How seldom it is that a man smites his breast, as did the contrite publican, and says, It is not providence that is awkward, it is not discipline that is severe, it is not the chain of events that is crooked or disentangled; it is I that am wrong: my heart has gone astray from God; I have forgotten to pray, I have forgotten to live upon heaven; I have turned away from the Holy One, and fixed the attention of my heart upon altars which my own hands have made: I am a fool, I am a sinner: God pity me; God be merciful to me a sinner! That is fundamental talk; that is coming to the root and core of things. If you are only whimpering about your symptoms, no good will come of it: hold God’s burning candle over the pit of your heart, and see how deep and black that pit is, and then cry mightily to God to take you home again by the way of the Cross. Not until we get into this fundamental soliloquy, self-talk, shall we come to any good issue in religious inquiry, or in pious self-discipline.
Hear how the Lord talks! He will Smite the bodies of these God-forgetters. There is only one way of getting at some men. Once we could have appealed to their higher nature; once they were subject to the pleasure and the eloquence of reason; once they had a conscience tender, sensitive, responsive; now they are spiritually dead, no conscience, no reason, no unselfishness; the whole nature has gone down in volume and in quality into a terrible emaciation: what shall be done? Smite their harvest! then like beasts they will miss their food. God does not delight in this; it is the poorest violence, it is the feeblest department of his providence; but he knows that it is the only providence some men can understand. As long as they have their regular sustenance they will be fat atheists; they must be hungered into reflection, they must be starved back into prayer. What mouth full of fatness can ask God’s blessing on the food? Take away the food, and the empty mouth may pray. God does not want to impoverish us; it is not in the nature of God wantonly to take the root off our house, and to pour the rain-floods down upon our fire and our hearthstone; that is not the way of the heart of God. But having pleaded with us, and reasoned with us, yea, to agony; having mightily desired our conversion and return and forgiveness; having watched for us all the twenty-four hours of the day; having lived for us and died for us, and sent for us by every angel-ministry at his command, and we will not come, what remains? Starve them! is the last resort of offended, dishonoured Providence. God thus takes away our health, and because of the soreness and weakness of the body we begin to wonder about the soul. That is God’s meaning. It is nothing to God to crush your bones or to afflict your blood poisonously; that gives him no pleasure: but that was the only way of bringing you to church, to the sanctuary, to consideration. You smote the heavens in your pride, and the heavens smote you in return, and then you began to say, What have I done? and God told you what you had done; you had forsaken the rock of your salvation, and gone away from your own faith and your father’s faith, and the whole idea of fatherliness and redemption and destiny; you had become atheists, godless ones, and that was the only way to bring you home again. He got you back to the Church through inflammation, through fever, through paralysis, through pain, through loss, through desolation; you came back over the graveyard No matter, said God; when he got you into his house again he said, This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. It is in the reclamation, not in the punishment, that God takes pleasure. Curious words, “penitence” and “punishment,” etymologically growing out of the same root. Penitence and punishment why, they seem to walk away from one another into opposite directions; so they may, but they belong to the same etymological root. When we begin to be punished God means us to begin to repent, and when we begin to repent the right way we begin to feel that the punishment is not arbitrary, but divine; and thus out of the same root grow very different flowers, yet the same in quality, and the same in their highest symbolism.
Notice the reasonableness of this course. God makes it a matter of argument; the Lord uses our little, logical, connective terms; he says “therefore,” and “because”; so we have it in this very instance “Because thou hast forgotten… therefore.” This is reasoning together. God does not come before us and say, I will tell you nothing, you shall hear nothing of my reasons, I will afflict you from the point of my sovereignty, and not from the point of my Fatherhood. There shall be no condescension in this infliction of divine wrath: on the contrary, he says whilst his hand is lifted, This chastisement is “because.” Thus we, if in a right spirit, consent to our own punishment, the strokes of God, how terrible soever, being only too weak to represent even our own estimate of our base ingratitude. Who is it that has been forgotten? The Giver, the Father, the Servant of all. We have taken things as if we had a right to them. No man can so take things and enjoy them. When we pluck the flower by divine permission, oh, how fragrant, how sweet in wordless gospels, how beautiful in all discernible and undiscernible images! We may have grown the flower on our freehold or on our rented ground, but the earth is the Lord’s; the freeholder is only a tenant-at-will; it doth please his withering majesty to call himself freeholder; not an inch of all the great state is his but by secondary right and for purposes of convenience. Having forgotten the Father, how can we expect to have harvest after harvest, as if we had remembered him in love, and honoured him in service? Men cannot trifle with the system within which they are placed and be held blameless. Let us understand more and more that we are members of a scheme, parts of a unity; that nothing is complete in itself, or self-ending; that every life palpitates with some other life and for some other life: thus, realising that we are parts of a plan, and not isolated individualities or particles, we shall feel that we cannot trifle with a divinely-constructed economy, and come out at the other end as if we had done nothing wrong. We have interfered with the whole machine. It may have been a very little wheel we have injured; but who can tell what a little wheel is in so complicated a piece of mechanism or organism as is this portion of creation within which we live? What are little wheels? It hath pleased God to turn little things to great purposes.
The one thing we have forgotten is that we are part and parcel of something else. There is no licentious liberty. A man cannot drink himself to death and be the only suffering party. You are wrong when you say that certain persons only injure themselves; it hath pleased God so to build the human universe that no man can injure himself without injuring other people. You may now be injuring posterity. Remember how sensitive are all human and vital relations. The drink you are taking into your blood now may turn some poor soul hellward a century hence; then the people will blame him, and call him fool, and reproach him, and shut him up in gaol, and sentence him to penal servitude or to the gallows. It is you, you, who ought now to be damned, but for the mercy of God. Thus circuitously but certainly God comes down upon us by way of judgment or by way of blessing; proving to us that no man liveth unto himself and no man dieth unto himself, that every life is of consequence to every other life in the universe. Can a watch break the mainspring and go on just as if nothing had happened? Can the clay mould itself into shape and beauty? Can the marble by some inward motion of its own throw off the burdens and accumulations that hide the beauty of chiselled sculpture? If a man cannot neglect his physical health without entailing suffering, how can a soul neglect its God and still enjoy his universe?
Mark how life is based either upon infatuation or upon reason. Every man has some foundation for his policy and action in life. The Lord in this seventeenth chapter of Isaiah is very ironical and satirical, as we shall see. He says, “Therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips: in the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish.” What mockery is like the sarcasm of heaven? How bitter can the kind heavens be! How terrible is the laugh of God! The Lord will allow those who have left him to plant pleasant plants, to set them in a row, to build them on a terrace; the seed shall flourish, and men shall say amid their pleasant plants and their strange slips, their exotics and their fine gatherings of slips and cuttings, Behold how these grow! see, no blight falls upon them because of our spiritual rebellion; we have done what we pleased with ourselves and before God; lo, how kind the garden is to us: if God hath himself forsaken us the heavens smile and the earth brings forth abundantly behold behold! Then the Lord says, “But.” Oh that reservation of God, that parenthesis of providence, that interrupting, interpolating voice and mastery! “But the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow”; all your strange flowers and strange slips shall blossom and bloom but for one day; in the morning the seed flourishes, the strange plants live one day. These occasional sun-gleams may foretoken the thunderstorm. God can mock, God can lead the bullock to the knife by way of a fat pasture. There is therefore a promise here, but the promise is limited. You shall have mushroom growths, you shall see wonderful things within the span of a single day; but what shall the harvest be? The meaning is, we may be infatuated by appearances, by immediate successes, by flowers and strange slips growing up within the compass of one little day, and we may say to ourselves, Behold, here is success: God has not rewarded us according to the brokenness of his law; he has forgotten to reward us with shame and with disappointment. This, let us repeat, is the satire of heaven. Give the ox six weeks of a thick pasture before the poleaxe; let the culprit sleep well the night before the gallows; let the atheist have one fat day, one gleesome festival; let the rebellious have their mouths filled with meat, and whilst their teeth are still fastened upon the food I will smite them with pestilence and death. That is a tragedy; that is the doom of heaven. We know you have your riches, you have your beautiful estates, you have your heavy balances at the bank; we know that many things are growing round about you right luxuriantly; but what shall the harvest be? If a man will not ply himself with that question, and bring himself to answer it, he is a fool.
The harvest tries everything. The harvest is the end, the issue; the harvest determines what it all comes to. Call no man happy until he is dead; call no man a failure until his last effort has been made; call no man rich who has only money; call no man strong who has only a healthy body. Strength is a larger term than mere physical health, and wealth is a larger term than the mere possession of money. Oh, sons of men, what shall the permanent quantity be? what shall the harvest be? Is this severe? No: it is righteous. It would be severe if it operated in one direction only. Happily, this is only one aspect of the divine government; we are entitled to reverse this text, and say, Because thou hast remembered the God of thy salvation, and hast been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses burst out with new wine. Thou hast not withheld from God the gladness and the service of thine heart, and he will not withhold from thee the music and the rapture and the abundance of harvest. The way of the Lord is equal.
Prayer
Father of our spirits, teach us how near thou art. Once we thought thee afar off, because we ourselves were far off from thee: now we know that thou art near us, within us, and that we live, and move, and have our being in thee. Enable us to realise this more and more clearly, that we may draw from it all the infinite comfort with which it is charged; then shall we be at rest, and in the security of great peace we shall serve thee with a steadier will. Be within us as a light that does not dazzle, a fire that does not consume, a judgment that does not cast into despair. Make all the incidents of life helpful to our education; may we be wise men, noticing the times, reckoning up all the forces that operate upon us, and drawing from all we see and hear lessons concerning the providence of God: thus shall we be at church every day, and spend our lives at the altar, and shall be possessed of that understanding without which all other wealth is mockery. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: may we begin there, for no other beginning is possible, and growing up into all life, yea, into the very sky of the brightness of wisdom, may we be children of the light, known and read of all men as simple and true and honest All these desires are the creation of God; they are strange to us, they are not born in us of the flesh; these are the miracles of thy grace: may it please thee to strengthen them all, encourage them and sustain them, and bring them to ample fruition. We bless thee for thy continued care. He that keepeth Israel doth not slumber, yea, his eyelids close not: behold, thou art the same to us by night as by day, and the darkness and the light are both alike unto God. Direct our steps in wisdom; suffer us not to follow the false light of our own fancy, or to seek to consummate the purposes of our perverted will: may we know no will but thine; then shall there be joy in the heart as those who keep wedding festival, and there shall be brightness before us as those who dwell on the mountain-tops, far above the cloud and fog of the earth. We beseech thee to give us a clearer apprehension of Jesus Christ as the incarnate God, God in flesh, God in vision, God near enough to be seen, and touched, and heard with the open ear, and through him may we become sons of God; may he lift up our whole being, and make us know the joy of the security of spiritual adoption: then shall all our prayer be “Father,” and if beyond that we have no utterance, it is enough; it means all thy love and all our need. Be more than loving to those who need thee most to the sick, whose days are grief and whose nights are pain; to those who watch the dying and who thus die many deaths. Be with those who are mourning great losses, who have dug deep graves” and cannot fill them up. Be with all who would be in the sanctuary if they could, but are kept away from it by illness. Be with all travellers on land and on sea, and comfort them, and give them security and favour in the sight of the people; bring them back again in health and joy. Be with all who are in perplexity, not knowing what to do, whose life is a series of failing experiments, who try and fail, who travel up the hill and fall backward at eventide, so that the journey remains unaccomplished; the Lord give them steadiness of mind, or surely they will faint away and die in bewilderment. Give the children thy blessing; take them up in thine arms and bless them; then when thou dost set them down again they will be ready for all the duty of time. Have mercy upon us wherein we have sinned; when we say we are miserable sinners we know the depth of the meaning of the words: the Lord send to us messages from the Cross, and wherein we cry from our hearts, and are contrite in our spirits, really and truly sorry for the wreck we have wrought, do thou lift us up again into the sunlight of forgiveness, and give us the liberty of pardon. Be with us for the few nights and days we have yet to work off on the wheel of time: they fly away, and they are not; they are gone, and we cannot count them. May we, through the blood of the everlasting Covenant and the eternal energy of the Spirit, be better to-day than we were yesterday. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Isa 17:10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips:
Ver. 10. Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation. ] Thou hast disloyally departed from him, as a wife doth from her husband, though he were both able and ready to have saved thee.
Therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants.
And shall set it with strange slips,
a Exotica fere non nisi preciosa afferuntur. – Jun.
Isaiah
THE HARVEST OF A GODLESS LIFE
Isa 17:10 – Isa 17:11 The original application of these words is to Judah’s alliance with Damascus, which Isaiah was dead against. He saw that it would only precipitate the Assyrian invasion, as in fact it did. Judah had forsaken God, and because they had done so, they had gone to seek for themselves delights-alliance with Damascus. The image of planting a garden of pleasures, and ‘vine slips of a stranger’ refers to sensuous idolatry as well as to the entangling alliance. Then follows a contemptuous description of the rapid growth of this alliance and of the care with which Israel cultivated it. ‘In a day thou makest thy plant to grow’ or fencest it, and next morning it was in blossom, so sedulously had they nursed and fostered it. Then comes the smiting contrast of what it was all for-’A harvest heap in the day of sickness and incurable pain.’
Now we may take this in a more general way as containing large truths which affect the life of every one of us.
I. The Sin of a Godless Life.
It is most common among us, far more so than active infidelity, far more so than gross sin, far more so than conscious hostility.
b The implied Criminality of it. He is the ‘Rock of thy strength’ and the ‘God of thy salvation.’ Rock is the grand Old Testament name of God, expressing in a pregnant metaphor both what He is in Himself and what in relation to those who trust Him. It speaks of stability, elevation, massiveness, and of defence and security. The parallel title sets Him forth as the Giver of salvation; and both names set in clear light the sinful ingratitude of forgetting God, and force home the question: ‘Do ye thus requite the Lord, oh foolish people and unwise?’
c The implied Absurdity of it. What a contrast between the safe ‘munitions of rocks’ and the unsheltered security of these Damascene gardens! What fools to leave the heights and come down into the plain! Think of the contrast between the sufficiency of God and the emptiness of the substitutes. Forgetfulness of Him and preference of creatures cannot be put into language which does not convict it of absurdity.
II. The Busy Effort and Apparent Success of a Godless Life.
b Such work is far harder than the work of serving God. It takes a great deal of toil to make that garden grow. The world is a hard taskmaster. God’s service is easy. He sets us in Eden to till and dress it, but when we forget Him, the ground is cursed, and bears thorns and thistles, and sweat drips from our brows.
Men take more pains to damn themselves than to save themselves. There is nothing more wearying than the pursuit of pleasure. ‘Pleasant plants’-that is a hopeless kind of gardening. There is nothing more degrading.
‘Ye lust and desire to have,’-what a contrast is in, Ask and have! We might live even as the lilies or the ravens, or with only this difference, that we laboured, but were as uncaring and as peaceful as they.
God is given . The world has to be bought . Its terms are ‘Nothing for nothing.’
c Such work has sometimes quick, present success.
‘In the day.’ It is hard for men to labour towards far-off unseen good. We like to have what will grow up in a night, like Jonah’s gourd. So these present satisfactions in a worldly life appeal to worldly, sensuous natures. And it is hard to set over against these a plant which grows slowly, and only bears fruit in the next world.
III. The End of it all.
a How poor the fruit will he that a God-forgetting man will take out of life! There is but one heap from all the long struggle. He has ‘sowed much and brought home little.’ What shall we take with us out of our busy years as their net result? A very small sack will be large enough to hold the harvest that many of us have reaped.
b All this God-forgetting life of pleasure-seeking and idolatry is bringing on a terrible, inevitable consummation.
‘Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.’
No doubt there is often a harvest of grief and desperate sorrow springing, even in this life, from forgetting God. For it is only they who set their hopes on Him that are never disappointed, and only they who have chosen Him for their portion who can always say, ‘I have a goodly heritage.’ But the real harvest is not reaped till death has separated the time of sowing from that of ingathering. The sower shall reap; i.e . every man shall inherit the consequences of his deeds. ‘They that have planted it shall eat it.’
c That harvest home will be a day of sadness to some. These are terrible words-’grief and desperate sorrow,’ or ‘pain and incurable sickness.’ We dare not dilate on this. But if we trust in Christ and sow to the Spirit, we shall then ‘rejoice before God as with the joy of harvest,’ and ‘return with joy, bringing our sheaves with us.’
Rock. Reference to Pentateuch (Deu 32:13). App-92.
pleasant plants. Probably = plantings of Adonis.
strange slips: or slips of a strange [God],
thou hast: Isa 51:13, Deu 6:12, Deu 8:11, Deu 8:14, Deu 8:19, Psa 9:17, Psa 106:13, Psa 106:21, Jer 2:32, Jer 17:13, Hos 2:13, Hos 2:14, Hos 4:6, Hos 8:14, Hos 13:6, Hos 13:7
the God: Isa 12:2, 1Ch 16:35, Psa 65:5, Psa 68:19, Psa 68:20, Psa 79:9, Psa 85:4, Hab 3:18
the rock: Isa 26:4, Deu 32:4, Deu 32:15, Psa 18:2, Psa 31:2
shalt thou: Isa 65:21, Isa 65:22, Lev 26:16, Lev 26:20, Deu 28:30, Deu 28:38-42, Jer 12:13, Amo 5:11, Zep 1:13
Reciprocal: Deu 32:18 – the Rock Job 15:31 – for vanity Psa 44:17 – yet Psa 129:7 – he that bindeth Jer 3:21 – and they have Eze 23:35 – Because Hos 2:9 – take Hag 1:9 – Ye looked
Isa 17:10-11. Because thou, O Israel, hast forgotten the God of thy salvation That God, who was thy only sure defence; therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants Fetched from far countries, and therefore highly esteemed. The sense is, Thou shalt use much industry and cost, but to no purpose, as it follows. In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, &c. Beginning early in the morning, thou shalt, from day to day, use all care and diligence, that what thou hast planted and sown may thrive; but the harvest shall be a heap, &c. But in the time of your grief, or when this grievous calamity shall come, all your harvest shall be but one heap, very inconsiderable in itself, and easily carried away by your enemies: in other words, when thou expectest to reap the fruit of thy labours, thou shalt find nothing but loss and disappointment. Lowth. See the margin, where the day of inheritance means the time of enjoying any thing which we have taken pains for.
17:10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with foreign {m} slips:
(m) Which are excellent and brought out of other countries.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes