Since Israel will not pay attention to God He will cause their destruction and even though He could He will not prevent it. God had called to his people in so many ways, and still does today hoping to avert the disaster (Hosea 11:1, 2; Matthew 23:37), but they will not hear until the disaster rips all their false supports from them. These include their worshipping pagan gods and looking for military assistance from adjacent nations. He is using a comparison to the end of their forty-year wandering in the wilderness as they finally went in to the promise land under general Joshua’s leadership. The cities that the Canaanites left as they fled Joshua’s army for fear of the Israelites, the same, and in the same manner, shall be left by the Israelites, for fear of the Assyrians. The completeness of the abandonment is characterized by places in the wood and on the mountain top They abandoned everything, the root and the branches, in their flight, when the Israelites entered the land of Canaan. And she shall be desolate. At the time of the Israelite invasion the Amorite cities were destroyed and left totally desolate. They remained that way for ages, and became places that were truly abandoned to wild plants, weeds, and forest underbrush.
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