Isaiah 1:8 - A Besieged City

ISAIAH 2:7-8 - Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.

There is perhaps deeper layers of meaning suggesting this both a spiritual fulfillment and a temporal fulfillment of this passage, the spiritual coming before the temporal as it commonly does, such as in the creation of the world, “For I, the Lord God, created all things of which I have spoken spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth” (Genesis 2:5 [Moses 3:5]). 

Viewing firsth the spiritual imagery of this passage, remember that the gardens represent the worship or holy places of the people. Condemning the house of Israel for its idol worship, Isaiah says, “ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen” and “as a garden that hath no water” (Isaiah 1:29, 30). In this viewpoint, the garden of Israel is a vineyards of deceit and idolatry, surround those who seek to be the children of Zion. These gardens should be fruitful and beautiful, flourishingwith water and filled with righteousness; in days to come “he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord” (Isaiah 51:3). But because Israel has “transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant” (Isaiah 24:5) the gardens are without water and burned. And those who desire to be Zion, who put aside the idolatry, are encompassed about with wickedness on all sides as a city besieged.

In a more temporal manner, only a remnant of the house of Israel will be saved in the coming days. “And the Lord have removed men far away, for there shall be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. But yet in it there shall be a tenth, and they shall return” (Isaiah 6:12-13). “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant shall return, yea even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return;” (Isaiah 10:20-22). That remnant will be the offspring of Zion, for Zion was in the beginning and will come again. They will be people who will have hearts like unto Enoch and his people. Moses said about Enoch and his Zion city, “And the Lord called his people, Zion, because they were of one heart and of one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there were no poor among them” (Genesis 7:23 [Moses 7:18]).

What a joyous and wonderful promise that though the judgments of the Lord will fall upon his people and upon the world, there will be some at least who will remain, and they will become righteous and beautiful.

“Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child; for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood anymore” (Isaiah 54:1-4, see also 3 Nephi 10 [22:1-4]).