'Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not
been mindful of the Rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant
pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips: In the day shalt
thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy
seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief
and of desperate sorrow.'--ISAIAH xvii. 10, 11.
The original application of these words is to Judah's alliance with
Damascus, which Isaiah was dead against. He saw that it would only
precipitate the Assyrian invasion, as in fact it did. Judah had
forsaken God, and because they had done so, they had gone to seek for
themselves delights--alliance with Damascus. The image of planting a
garden of pleasures, and 'vine slips of a stranger' refers to sensuous
idolatry as well as to the entangling alliance. Then follows a
contemptuous description of the rapid growth of this alliance and of
the care with which Israel cultivated it. 'In a day thou makest thy
plant to grow' (or fencest it), and next morning it was in blossom, so
sedulously had they nursed and fostered it. Then comes the smiting
contrast of what it was all for--'A harvest heap in the day of sickness
and incurable pain.'
Now we may take this in a more general way as containing large truths
which affect the life of every one of us.