Isaiah 17

An Oracle concerning Damascus

¹⁷An oracle concerning Damascus.

See, Damascus will cease to be a city

and will become a heap of ruins.^*

²Her towns will be deserted forever;ⁱ

they will be places for flocks,

which will lie down, and no one will make them afraid.^*

³The 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.^*

⁴On that day

the glory of Jacob will be brought low,

and the fat of his flesh will grow lean.^*

⁵And 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.^*

⁶Gleanings 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.^*

⁷On that day people will look to their Maker, with their eyes on the Holy One of Israel;^{* 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^j or the altars of incense.^*

⁹On that day their fortified cities will be like the deserted places of the Hivites and the Amorites,^k which they deserted because of the people of Israel, and there will be desolation.^*

¹⁰For 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,^*

¹¹though 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.^*

¹²Woe, 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!^*

¹³[[When the nations roar like the roaring of many waters,]]^l

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.^*

¹⁴At 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.^*