Bible Strands
Isaiah 27:10
For the fortified city lies deserted—a homestead abandoned, a wilderness forsaken. There the calves graze, and there they lie down; they strip its branches bare.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet addresses Israel immediately after describing the atonement of Jacob’s guilt and the removal of idolatrous altars, detailing the physical state of a once-secure nation under judgment.
The words — בְּצוּרָה (be.tzu.Rah) means fortified, while מְשֻׁלָּח (me.shu.Lach) means driven away or deserted, capturing the shift from defended settlement to open abandonment.
The thread — This pattern of abandoned strongholds recurs in Isaiah 17:2 and 17:9, where fortified places become forsaken thickets, and in Isaiah 32:13, where former houses of merriment are left to overgrowth.
Why it lands — It demands the reader accept that human fortifications and agricultural prosperity are contingent on covenant standing, and that divine withdrawal of favor reduces even the most developed land to barren fuel.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 17:2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they will be left to the flocks, which will lie down with no one to fear.
- Isaiah 17:9 In that day their strong cities will be like forsaken thickets and summits, abandoned to the Israelites and to utter desolation.
- Isaiah 32:13 and for the land of my people, overgrown with thorns and briers—even for every house of merriment in this city of revelry.
- Jeremiah 26:6 then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city an object of cursing among all the nations of the earth.’”
- Jeremiah 26:18 “Micah the Moreshite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah and told all the people of Judah that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.’
- Micah 3:12 Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.
- Isaiah 5:9 I heard the LORD of Hosts declare: “Surely many houses will become desolate, great mansions left unoccupied.
- Isaiah 6:11 Then I asked: “How long, O Lord?” And He replied: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left unoccupied and the land is desolate and ravaged,
- Isaiah 7:25 For fear of the briers and thorns, you will no longer traverse the hills once tilled by the hoe; they will become places for oxen to graze and sheep to trample.
- Isaiah 25:2 Indeed, You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin. The fortress of strangers is a city no more; it will never be rebuilt.