Bible Strands
Isaiah 49:17
Your builders hasten back; your destroyers and wreckers depart from you.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The LORD addresses Zion, speaking in the moment of promised national recovery just after declaring His constant remembrance of her walls. This declaration immediately precedes the command to look around for the gathering of scattered people.
The words — מִֽהֲר֖וּ (mi.ha.Ru) literally means "they have made haste," and יֵצֵֽאוּ (ye.Tze.'u) means "they will go out." These verbs establish the verse’s structural contrast between the swift return of builders and the departure of destroyers.
The thread — The motif of God’s active removal of suffering and restoration of His people appears in Isaiah 51:13 and 51:22. The gathering and bridal imagery in Isaiah 62:5 extends this thread of covenantal restoration and divine remembrance.
Why it lands — The text states that destruction will end and construction will accelerate, demanding recognition of God’s direct intervention in historical reversal. It requires the reader to align present assessment with divine timing rather than visible circumstances.
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
Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 51:13 But you have forgotten the LORD, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. You live in terror all day long because of the fury of the oppressor who is bent on destruction. But where is the fury of the oppressor?
- Isaiah 62:5 For as a young man marries a young woman, so your sons will marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you.
- Isaiah 51:22 Thus says your Lord, the LORD, even your God, who defends His people: “See, I have removed from your hand the cup of staggering. From that goblet, the cup of My fury, you will never drink again.
- Ezekiel 28:24 For the people of Israel will no longer face a pricking brier or a painful thorn from all around them who treat them with contempt. Then they will know that I am the Lord GOD.’
- Ezra 1:5 So the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites—everyone whose spirit God had stirred—prepared to go up and rebuild the house of the LORD in Jerusalem.
- Nehemiah 2:4 “What is your request?” replied the king. So I prayed to the God of heaven
- Isaiah 10:6 I will send him against a godless nation; I will dispatch him against a people destined for My rage, to take spoils and seize plunder, and to trample them down like clay in the streets.
- Isaiah 49:19 For your ruined and desolate places and your ravaged land will now indeed be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away.
- Isaiah 51:18 Among all the sons she bore, there is no one to guide her; among all the sons she brought up, there is no one to take her hand.
- Nehemiah 2:17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned down. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we will no longer be a disgrace.”