In The Word
Read: Isaiah 17-19
Prophecy about Damascus
17 The pronouncement concerning Damascus:
“Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city
And will become a fallen ruin.
2 The cities of Aroer are abandoned;
They will be for herds to lie down in,
And there will be no one to frighten them.
3 The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
And sovereignty from Damascus
And the remnant of Aram;
They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel,”
Declares the Lord of armies.
4 Now on that day the glory of Jacob will fade,
And the fatness of his flesh will become lean.
5 It will be like the reaper gathering the standing grain,
As his arm harvests the ears,
Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain
In the Valley of Rephaim.
6 Yet gleanings will be left in it like the shaking of an olive tree,
Two or three olives on the topmost branch,
Four or five on the branches of a fruitful tree,
Declares the Lord, the God of Israel.
7 On that day man will look to his Maker
And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel.
8 And he will not look to the altars, the work of his hands,
Nor will he look to that which his fingers have made,
Even the Asherim and incense altars.
9 On that day their strong cities will be like abandoned places in the forest,
Or like branches which they abandoned before the sons of Israel;
And the land will be a desolation.
10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation
And have not remembered the rock of your refuge.
Therefore you plant delightful plants
And set them with vine shoots of a strange god.
11 On the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in,
And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom;
But the harvest will flee
On a day of illness and incurable pain.
12 Oh, the uproar of many peoples
Who roar like the roaring of the seas,
And the rumbling of nations
Who rush on like the rumbling of mighty waters!
13 The nations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters,
But He will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,
And be chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind,
Or like whirling dust before a gale.
14 At evening time, behold, there is terror!
Before morning they are gone.
This will be the fate of those who plunder us
And the lot of those who pillage us.
Message to Ethiopia
18 Woe, land of whirring wings
Which lies beyond the rivers of Cush,
2 Which sends messengers by the sea,
Even in papyrus vessels on the surface of the waters.
Go, swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth,
To a people feared far and wide,
A powerful and oppressive nation
Whose land the rivers divide.
3 All you who inhabit the world, and live on earth,
As soon as a flag is raised on the mountains, you will see it,
And as soon as the trumpet is blown, you will hear it.
4 For this is what the Lord has told me:
“I will quietly look from My dwelling place
Like dazzling heat in the sunshine,
Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
5 For before the harvest, as soon as the bud blossoms
And the flower becomes a ripening grape,
He will cut off the shoots with pruning knives,
And remove and tear away the spreading branches.
6 They will be left together for mountain birds of prey,
And for the animals of the earth;
And the birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them,
And all the animals of the earth will spend harvest time on them.
7 At that time a gift of tribute will be brought to the Lordof armies
From a people tall and smooth,
From a people feared far and wide,
A powerful and oppressive nation,
Whose land the rivers divide—
To the place of the name of the Lord of armies, toMount Zion.
Message to Egypt
19 The pronouncement concerning Egypt:
Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt;
The idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence,
And the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.
2 “So I will incite Egyptians against Egyptians;
And they will fight, each against his brother and each against his neighbor,
City against city and kingdom against kingdom.
3 Then the spirit of the Egyptians will be demoralized within them;
And I will confuse their strategy,
So that they will resort to idols and ghosts of the dead,
And to mediums and spiritists.
4 Furthermore, I will hand the Egyptians over to a cruel master,
And a mighty king will rule over them,” declares the Lord God of armies.
5 The waters from the sea will dry up,
And the river will be parched and dry.
6 The canals will emit a stench,
The streams of Egypt will thin out and dry up;
The reeds and rushes will rot away.
7 The bulrushes by the Nile, by the edge of the Nile
And all the sown fields by the Nile
Will become dry, be driven away, and be no more.
8 And the fishermen will grieve,
And all those who cast a line into the Nile will mourn,
And those who spread nets on the waters will dwindle away.
9 Moreover, the manufacturers of linen made from combed flax
And the weavers of white cloth will be utterly dejected.
10 And the pillars of Egypt will be crushed;
All the hired laborers will be grieved in soul.
11 The officials of Zoan are mere fools;
The advice of Pharaoh’s wisest advisers has become stupid.
How can you say to Pharaoh,
“I am a son of the wise, a son of ancient kings”?
12 Well then, where are your wise men?
Please let them tell you,
And let them understand what the Lord of armies
Has planned against Egypt.
13 The officials of Zoan have turned out to be fools,
The officials of Memphis are deluded;
Those who are the cornerstone of her tribes
Have led Egypt astray.
14 The Lord has mixed within her a spirit of distortion;
They have led Egypt astray in all that it does,
As a drunken person staggers in his vomit.
15 There will be no work for Egypt
Which its head or tail, its palm branch or bulrush, may do.
16 On that day the Egyptians will become like women, and they will tremble and be in great fear because of the waving of the hand of the Lord of armies, which He is going to wave over them. 17 The land of Judah will become a cause of shame to Egypt; everyone to whom it is mentioned will be in great fear because of the plan of the Lord of armies which He is making against them.
18 On that day five cities in the land of Egypt will be speaking the language of Canaan and swearing allegiance to the Lord of armies; one will be called the City of Destruction.
19 On that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a memorial stone to the Lord beside its border. 20 And it will become a sign and a witness to the Lord of armies in the land of Egypt; for they will cry out to the Lordbecause of oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will save them. 21 So the Lord will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lordon that day. They will even worship with sacrifice and offering, and will make a vow to the Lord and perform it. 22 And the Lordwill strike Egypt, striking but healing; so they will return to the Lord, and He will respond to their pleas and heal them.
23 On that day there will be a road from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria; and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.
24 On that day Israel will be the third party to Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, 25 whom the Lord of armies has blessed, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”
New American Standard Bible (NASB) Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Walking In The Word
The Lord is speaking specific messages through Isaiah to warn the people of Damascus, Ethiopia, and Egypt. These messages are also warnings for us to remind us of what can happen to a city or a nation that forgets God and does not remember the Rock of our refuge, but instead turns to idols and worldly counselors. God could execute His justice without warning. Instead, He desires that none should perish, but for all to come to repentance.
Why does it sometimes take disaster to get our attention? Many times the blessings of God cause us to slowly fade in our relationship with God. It seems that when we have everything we need, we begin to think we do not need God. We forget that it is only by His hand that we are blessed. We get lazy in our time with God, and our eyes begin to look only to those things that we enjoy and make us comfortable. We begin to listen to the voice of the world. We get busy building bigger barns to hold all the blessings. Then in His love, He speaks to us to warn us to come back to Him. However, when we do not listen, He has to get our attention so that our eyes will look up to Him. Where is your focus today? Does He have your undivided attention? If not, consider this your wake-up call to return to His ancient paths.