Oracle of Judgment on Damascus

• 17 An oracle of Damascus:“Look! Damascus will cease being a city
  • and will become a heap of ruins.
  • 2 [fn] they will be for the flocks,
    • and they will lie down and[fn] them.
  • 3 the fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus;
    • and the remnant of Aram will be like the glory of the children of Israel,”

declares[fn] Yahweh of hosts.

• 4 “And this shall happen:On that day, the glory of Jacob will be brought low,
  • and the fat of his flesh will become lean.
  • 5 [fn] standing grain and he reaps grain with his arm,
• and it shall be like one who gathers ears of grain
  • in the valley of Rephaim.
• 6 And gleanings will be left over in it, as when an olive tree is beaten,[fn]two or three ripe olive berries in the top of a branch,
  • four or five on its fruitful branches,”

declares[fn] Yahweh, the God of Israel.

• 7 and its eyes will look to the holy one of Israel;
• 8  the work of its hands,
• and it will not see what its fingers made
  • and the poles of Asherah worship and the incense altars.

9 On that day, its fortified cities[fn] will be like theabandonment of the wooded place and the summit,[fn] which they deserted because of the children of Israel; and there will be desolation.

• 10 and you have not remembered the rock of your refuge;
• therefore you plant plants of pleasantness,
  • and you[fn] a vine of a foreigner.
  • 11 them grow, and in the morning of your sowing you bring them into bloom,
• yet the harvest will flee[fn] in a dayof sickness and incurable pain.