An Oracle concerning Damascus
17 An oracle concerning Damascus.
See, Damascus will cease to be a city
and will become a heap of ruins.(A)
2 Her towns will be deserted forever;[a]
they will be places for flocks,
which will lie down, and no one will make them afraid.(B)
3 The fortress will disappear from Ephraim
and the kingdom from Damascus,
and the remnant of Aram will be
like the glory of the people of Israel,
says the Lord of hosts.(C)
4 On that day
the glory of Jacob will be brought low,
and the fat of his flesh will grow lean.(D)
5 And it shall be as when reapers gather standing grain
and their arms harvest the ears,
and as when one gleans the ears of grain
in the Valley of Rephaim.(E)
6 Gleanings will be left in it,
as when an olive tree is beaten—
two or three berries
in the top of the highest bough,
four or five
on the branches of a fruit tree,
says the Lord God of Israel.(F)
7 On that day people will look to their Maker, with their eyes on the Holy One of Israel;(G)8 they will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the sacred poles[b] or the altars of incense.(H)
9 On that day their fortified cities will be like the deserted places of the Hivites and the Amorites,[c] which they deserted because of the people of Israel, and there will be desolation.(I)
10 For you have forgotten God your Savior
and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;
therefore, though you plant pleasant gardens
and set out branches of a foreign god,(J)
11 though you make them grow on the day that you plant them
and make them blossom in the morning that you sow,
yet the harvest will flee away
in a day of sickness and incurable pain.(K)
12 Woe, the thunder of many peoples,
they thunder like the thundering of the sea!
The roar of nations,
they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!(L)
13 [[When the nations roar like the roaring of many waters,]][d]
he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,
chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind
and like whirling dust before the storm.(M)
14 At evening time, sudden terror!
Before morning, they are no more.
This is the fate of those who despoil us
and the lot of those who plunder us.(N)
Footnotes
- 17.2Cn Compare Gk: Heb the cities of Aroer are deserted
- 17.8Heb Asherahs
- 17.9Cn Compare Gk: Heb places of the wood and the highest bough
- 17.13Heb mss Syr lack When . . . waters
Cross references
- 17.1 : 2 Kings 16.9; Isa 8.4; 10.9; Jer 49.23; Am 1.3; Zech 9.1
- 17.2 : Jer 7.33
- 17.3 : Isa 7.16; 8.4
- 17.4 : Isa 10.3, 16
- 17.5 : 2 Sam 5.18, 22; Jer 51.33
- 17.6 : Isa 24.13; 27.12
- 17.7 : Isa 10.20; Mic 7.7
- 17.8 : Ex 34.13; Deut 7.5; Isa 27.9; 30.22; 31.7
- 17.9 : Isa 7.25
- 17.10 : Ps 68.19; Isa 26.4; 30.29; 51.13
- 17.11 : Job 4.8; Ps 90.6
- 17.12 : Ps 18.4; Jer 6.23; Ezek 43.2
- 17.13 : Ps 9.5; Isa 13.14; 29.5; 33.3; 41.15, 16
- 17.14 : 2 Kings 19.35; Isa 41.12