The Fate of The Defenced City (Isaiah 27:10-11).
They must not put their trust in their defenced cities, for those will fail them. For, because of their lack of understanding, their defenced city will become a solitary and desolate place where animals feed. This may be seen as spoken to the world which could certainly be pictured as such a city, with every nation trusting in its own strong walls and defences. But it may be that Samaria was especially in mind.
Analysis.
a For the defenced city is solitary, a habitation deserted and forsaken like the wilderness (Isaiah 27:10 a).
b There will the calf feed, and there will he lie down and consume its branches (Isaiah 27:10 b).
b When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off, the women will come and set them on fire (Isaiah 27:11 a).
a For it is a people of no understanding. Therefore He Who made them will not have compassion on them, and He Who formed them will show them no favour (Isaiah 27:11 b).
In ‘a' their defenced city is deserted, solitary and forsaken, and in the parallel Yahweh will not have compassion on them and will show them no favour. In ‘b' it is the grazing place for cattle who will eat from its bushes, and in the parallel women will collect the boughs of what grows there for firewood.
‘For the defenced city is solitary,
A habitation deserted and forsaken like the wilderness.
There will the calf feed,
And there will he lie down and consume its branches.
When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off.
The women will come and set them on fire.
For it is a people of no understanding.
Therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them,
And he who formed them will show them no favour.'
The ‘defenced city' (compare Isaiah 25:2), which represents the world as relying on itself, shutting out God and always at war (compare Isaiah 24:10; Isaiah 25:2; Isaiah 26:5), especially as seen in the great cities of the Ancient Near East, and in this case possibly Samaria, will be left in its aloneness, deserted, forsaken, empty like the wilderness, a ruin. Its defences will have failed. The calf will feed and lie down there, and strip its branches. Its boughs will wither and women will come and break them off and use them as firewood.
For this is what those who ignore Yahweh can expect from the future, desolation and emptiness, with all glory gone. Their defenced city will become like an empty, deserted city in which cattle roam, and feed on the trees which break through the rubble, stripping the branches bare, which in the end have no future except as a source of firewood.
‘For it is a people of no understanding.' And all this will be the result of its failure to know and understand God, its failure to receive the truth, its blankness of mind towards the things of God. It is because it has ‘the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart' (Ephesians 4:18). It is because ‘the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who believe not, lest the light of the good news of the glory of Christ, Who is the image of God, shine through to them' (2 Corinthians 4:4). It may be significant that the world that turned away from Christ to Islam is indeed suffering and in darkness like this at this time.
The word for ‘understanding' is a plural of intensity, indicating total barrenness of thought. The world was possibly wise in its own eyes, but it was totally blank in its knowledge and discernment of God.
‘Therefore He who made them will not have compassion on them, and He who formed them will show them no favour.' This is the saddest picture of all. The God Who made them will no longer have compassion on them, for by their unwillingness to respond to Him they have rendered His help unavailing. The One Who so carefully fashioned them, will show no favour towards them, for He knew that they would spurn that favour and throw it back in His face, as they had done for so long. Their hearts would be too hardened to receive His mercy. Such becomes the state of those who constantly refuse to listen to God. It is not that God has become unmerciful, but that man has become totally unreceptive.