Isaiah 17:4-8
God strips away false glory so that a remnant learns to look to Him alone.
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 Yahweh, 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.
God strips away false glory so that a remnant learns to look to him alone.
To describe the humbling of Jacob’s strength and to portray the remnant turning from idols to the Holy One of Israel.
The northern kingdom of Israel was facing military and political collapse during the eighth century BC, particularly under pressure from Assyria.
The Oracle Against Damascus, the Fading Glory of Jacob, and the Rebuke of the Raging Nations
Isaiah 17 declares that Damascus and Ephraim fall because false reliance and forgetting God cannot stand, yet judgment leaves a remnant who look to the Maker and shows that the LORD can rebuke raging nations into nothing.