Isaiah 17

The oracle concerning Damascus.
“Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city and will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer are abandoned;
they will be for flocks, which will lie down with no one to make them afraid. The fortress will cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus;
the remnant of Aram will be like the glory of the people of Israel,” declares the LORD of hosts. “In that day the glory of Jacob will grow thin, and the fatness of his flesh will become lean. It will be as when a reaper gathers standing grain and his arm harvests the heads, as when one gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim. Gleanings will remain in it, as when an olive tree is beaten: two or three olives at the top of the highest bough, four or five on its fruitful branches,” declares the LORD, the God of Israel. In that day a man will look to his Maker, and his eyes will gaze on the Holy One of Israel. He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands;
he will not gaze on what his fingers have made, the Asherah poles and the incense altars. In that day his fortified cities will be like the abandoned places of the wooded heights and summits, which they deserted before the people of Israel;
there will be desolation. For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your stronghold.
Therefore you plant delightful plants and sow foreign vine shoots. On the day you plant, you make them grow, and in the morning you make your seed blossom;
but the harvest will be a heap in a day of sickness and incurable pain. Ah, the tumult of many peoples!
They roar like the roaring of the seas.
The uproar of nations!
They roar like the roaring of mighty waters. The nations roar like the roaring of many waters, but he rebukes them, and they flee far away, driven like chaff on the mountains before the wind, like a rolling thistle before a storm. At evening, behold, terror!
Before morning, it is gone.
This is the portion of those who plunder us, the lot of those who rob us.

Rights and attribution