Your country is desolate,
Your cities are burned with fire;
Strangers devour your land in your presence;
And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. (Isaiah 1:7)
Isaiah now makes direct application to the national entity that is Israel, just to be clear so that there can be no mistake concerning what he is speaking of (as if there could be!).
Your country is desolate - This is the literal statement of what he had just affirmed by a figure. In this there was much art. The figure Isa. 1:6 was striking. The resemblance between a man severely beaten, and entirely livid and sore, and a land perfectly desolate, was so impressive as to arrest the attention. This had been threatened as one of the curses which should attend disobedience;
Lev. 26:33:
And I will scatter you among the heathen, And will draw out a sword after you: And your land shall be desolate, And your cities waste.
Compare Isa. 1:31 where Isaiah speaks of the destruction of “transgressor” and “sinners” saying that
The strong shall be as tinder,
And the work of it as a spark;
Both will burn together,
And no one shall quench them.
No one shall escape, God will destroy all of them and all will be judged despite their seeming strength and ability to resist Him because they have appealed to the “terebinth trees” and they have chosen the “gardens” as Isaiah puts in that passage. They shall all burn up without “quenching”.
In Deut. 28:49-52 Moses makes direct prophecy (though not by name) to the coming of Assyria:
49 The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. 51 And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you.
52 “They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you.
God would raise up a nation to act as His own instrument of judgment against His ungrateful people. This foreign nation was described as coming from a far distance from Israel, a nation that would arise quickly and one that would completely devastate the Land. This was fulfilled first by Assyria (Is. 5:26; 7:18–20; 28:11; 37:18; Hos. 8:1) and second, by Babylon (Jer. 5:15; Lam. 4:19; Ezek. 17:3; Hab. 1:6–8).[1] Thus all of Israel was judged, both Northern and southern Kingdoms. The expression “from the end of the earth” is based on how the eye perceives the earth to end where horizon and sky meet; it is equivalent to “from afar”.[2]
It is not certain, or agreed among expositors, to what time the prophet refers in this passage. Some have supposed that he refers to the time of Ahaz, and to the calamities which came upon the nation during his reign; (2 Chr. 28:5-8). This time was yet future to Isaiah and thus Isaiah would be making a prophecy concerning what was coming under Sennacherib as already having taken place. He would thus be describing the future as if it had already taken place. Enemy invaders have made Judah desolate. Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion, is like a crude, temporary hut, standing gauntly amid the wreckage. But for the grace of God in sparing a very small remnant, the destruction would have been as complete as that of Sodom and Gomorrah.[3]
But we need not understand it so. When looking back at Scripture from the luxury of the future it is far too easy to make such assumptions. I think far more likely that Isaiah is referring to the time of Uzziah for the reign of Uzziah was indeed prosperous; (2 Chr. 26). But it is to be remembered that the land had been ravaged just before, under the reigns of Joash and Amaziah, by the kings of Syria and Israel; (2 Kings 14:8-14; 2 Chr. 24; 25); and it is by no means probable that it had recovered in the time of Uzziah. It was lying under the effect of the former desolation, and not improbably the enemies of the Jews were even then hovering around it, and possibly still in the very midst of it. The kingdom was going to decay, and the reign of Uzziah gave it only a temporary prosperity. We might add that there is a direct reference to the year King Uzziah died coming shortly, in chapter six of the book, not that this ties this reference definitely to that time, but it surely adds weight to the idea.
Most would have seen the reference to “your land” as an oblique reference to what the land produced. The land was important because it produced a product. So what was significant here was that foreigners here were to be consuming all that it produces. The land (trees and plants) and the fruitful production of fruit is a major illustration that the Lord uses in the New Testament for the real presence of Spiritual life. If a tree does not bear fruit, our Lord says, it is to be cut down and burned! In Matt 21:19-21 we read the parable of the Fig Tree:
And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” Immediately the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither away so soon?” So Jesus answered and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it will be done.
He underscores it in different words in Matt 24:32:
“Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.
We have the same teaching in other Gospels in Mark 11:13; Mark 11:20-21; Mark 13:28; Luke 6:44; Luke 13:6-7; Luke 21:29; & John 1:48-50. This teaching is not unique to the NT. God had put it in place long before in the OT for the nation of the nation of Israel. Really, this was a part of the reason for His chastening of them throughout the OT period. They were, so to speak, His field. He expected them to bear fruit in the world and they failed to do so, despite repeated, time after time, attempts on His part to “plow and fertilize” (the sending of prophets and messengers). Instead, they repeatedly killed those prophets and rebelled and went off into rebellion and idolatry, choosing instead to be like the nations around them, nations that God had mercifully chosen them out of instead of leaving them in and judging them in and destroying as a part of as He was entirely justified in doing.
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[1] MacArthur, J. J. (1997, c1997). The MacArthur Study Bible (electronic ed.) (Dt 28:49). Nashville: Word Pub.
[2] Whitlock, L. G., Sproul, R. C., Waltke, B. K., & Silva, M. (1995). Reformation study Bible, the : Bringing the light of the Reformation to Scripture : New King James Version. Includes index. (Dt 28:49). Nashville: T. Nelson.
[3] MacDonald, W., & Farstad, A. (1997, c1995). Believer's Bible Commentary : Old and New Testaments (Is 1:7). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
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