Isaiah 1:7 “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. 8 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.”
When a nation turns from God and becomes a “sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward” (Isaiah 1:4), conditions become so severe that “the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city”. This was cyclically the plight of the faithful Children of God in Old Testament times, and this dreadful cycle continues even down to our present day. The “cottage in a vineyard” and the “lodge in a garden of cucumbers” was a very small building in the midst of a very large “vineyard” or field of “cucumbers” where an attendant/guard was stationed day and night. The point is, it was an isolated place without the comfort of visitors, it was very lonely for those on duty. The “besieged city” visualizes a city that is ringed with hostile assailants that will not permit passage to or from the “city” and will not allow the inhabitants to be resupplied from without. The “besieged city” is left in a helpless and miserable state, a condition resulting from sin and rebellion against God. Divine Grace is the only thing that prevents complete annihilation; Isaiah goes on to explain that “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.” (Isaiah 1:9). That is, it is only by the Grace of our Merciful God that the entire nation and city is not completely destroyed to be remembered no more. We should take heed; for Paul applies this warning to us as well (Romans 9:29)!