A Few Gleanings Remain as Makers Are Forgotten

A few olives remain on the top bough, and eyes turn to the Maker

Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel. At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images.

Sparse gleanings are survivors. Handmade altars lose their pull when the Holy One is finally regarded. The turning is not a celebration of the emptying, and it does not authorize cruelty toward those who still have groves.

Forgotten rock and imported plantings yield a heap of grief

In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of Israel: and there shall be desolation. Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips: in the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.

Foreign slips that flourish overnight still harvest grief because the rock was forgotten. The agricultural failure is this people's, not a claim that every modern crop loss fulfills Isaiah, and not ethnic blame for imported seed as such.