Isaiah 17:11

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

Isaiah 17:11 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 17:11

In the day shall thou make thy plant to grow
Not that it is in the power of man to make it grow; but the sense is, that all means and methods should be used to make it grow, no cost nor pains should be spared: and in the morning shall thou make thy seed to flourish;
which may denote both diligence in the early care of it, and seeming promising success; and yet all should be in vain, and to no purpose: [but] the harvest [shall be] a heap in the day of grief;
or "of inheritance"; when it was about to be possessed and enjoyed, according to expectation, it shall be all thrown together in a heap, and be spoiled by the enemy: or, "the harvest" shall be "removed in the day of inheritance" F23; just when the fruit is ripe, and going to be gathered in, the enemy shall come and take it all away; and so, instead of being a time of joy, as harvest usually is, it will be a time of grief and trouble, and of desperate sorrow
too, or "deadly"; which will leave them in despair, without hope of subsistence for the present year, or of having another harvest hereafter, the land coming into the hands of their enemies.


FOOTNOTES:

F23 (hlxn Mwyb ryuq dn) "recedit messis in die hereditatis sive possessionis"; so some in Vatablus.

Isaiah 17:11 In-Context

9 In that day shall their strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel; and it shall be a desolation.
10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not been mindful of the rock of your strength; therefore you plant pleasant plants, and set it with strange slips.
11 In the day of your planting you hedge it in, and in the morning you make your seed to 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 shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm.
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