Most people read Isaiah 17 as “just” an old prophecy about Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel getting crushed by Assyria in the 8th century BC.
That part is true — but if you stop there, you miss the electric jolt that hits in the closing lines:
“Ah, the thunder of many peoples;
they thunder like the thundering of the sea!
Ah, the roar of nations;
they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!
The nations roar like the roaring of many waters,
but He will rebuke them, and they will flee far away…
At evening time, behold, terror!
Before morning, they are no more.
This is the portion of those who plunder us,
and the lot of those who rob us.”
— Isaiah 17:12–14 (ESV)
Read those verses slowly. This is no ordinary battle. This is a vast multinational coalition storming toward Jerusalem like a tsunami — and then, in a single night, God wipes them out so completely that by dawn there is literally nothing left.
Sound familiar?
Turn a few hundred pages to the right and you meet almost the exact same scene in Ezekiel 38–39:
- A massive alliance from the remotest parts of the north (Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, Togarmah) descends on a restored Israel living in unwalled security.
- They come “like a cloud covering the land.”
- God responds with earthquake, pestilence, torrential rain, hailstones, fire, and brimstone.
- The destruction is so sudden and total that the birds and beasts are invited to a sacrificial feast on the corpses (Ezek 39:17–20).
- The nations finally “know that I am the LORD.”
Two prophets, separated by at least a century, describing the same climactic invasion and the same overnight annihilation by the hand of God. Coincidence? Hardly.
Isaiah himself tips us off that he’s doing something bigger than 734 BC. The language in verses 12–14 is deliberately universal and apocalyptic: “many peoples… many waters… the nations.” That’s the same imagery Revelation 17:15 uses for the final empire of Antichrist. And the abrupt “at evening… before morning” annihilation perfectly matches the 701 BC deliverance from Sennacherib (when the angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night — 2 Kings 19:35), but Isaiah paints it in colors too large for that event alone.
In other words, Isaiah is doing what the prophets constantly do: he takes a near-term historical judgment (Assyria in 701 BC) and uses it as a dress rehearsal for the final judgment on the last great coalition that will dare to touch the apple of God’s eye.
So when we get to Ezekiel 38–39, or Psalm 83, or Zechariah 14, or the return of the King in Revelation 19, we are not reading something brand-new. We are reading the full-orchestra version of the melody Isaiah first whistled in 17:12–14.
Evening terror. Morning silence.
The invaders vanish like a bad dream at sunrise.
And the whole world finally knows that the God of Jacob keeps His covenants — forever.
Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.
The ancient prophets saw your day from afar, and they could not keep quiet about it.
Even so, come.
Because one day soon it will be evening, and terror will come — and before morning, the enemies of God will be no more.