7-8 Yes, the Day is coming when people will notice The One Who Made Them, take a long hard look at The Holy of Israel. They’ll lose interest in all the stuff they’ve made—altars and monuments and rituals, their homemade, handmade religion—however impressive it is.

And yes, the Day is coming when their fortress cities will be abandoned—the very same cities that the Hivites and Amorites abandoned when Israel invaded! And the country will be empty, desolate.

You Have Forgotten God

10-11 And why? Because you have forgotten God-Your-Salvation,
    not remembered your Rock-of-Refuge.
And so, even though you are very religious,
    planting all sorts of bushes and herbs and trees
    to honor and influence your fertility gods,
And even though you make them grow so well,
    bursting with buds and sprouts and blossoms,
Nothing will come of them. Instead of a harvest
    you’ll get nothing but grief and pain, pain, pain.

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They will not look to the altars,(A)
    the work of their hands,(B)
and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles[a](C)
    and the incense altars their fingers(D) have made.

In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth.(E) And all will be desolation.

10 You have forgotten(F) God your Savior;(G)
    you have not remembered the Rock,(H) your fortress.(I)
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
    and plant imported vines,(J)

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 17:8 That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah