Isaiah 17-18

New King James Version

“Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city,
And it will be a ruinous heap.
^2 [b]The cities of ^(B)Aroer are forsaken;
They will be for flocks
Which lie down, and ^(C)no one will make them afraid.
^3 (D)The fortress also will cease from Ephraim,
The kingdom from Damascus,
And the remnant of Syria;
They will be as the glory of the children of Israel,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

⁴ “In that day it shall come to pass
That the glory of Jacob will ^[c]wane,
And ^(E)the fatness of his flesh grow lean.
^5 (F)It shall be as when the harvester gathers the grain,
And reaps the heads with his arm;
It shall be as he who gathers heads of grain
In the Valley of Rephaim.
^6 (G)Yet gleaning grapes will be left in it,
Like the shaking of an olive tree,
Two or three olives at the top of the uppermost bough,
Four or five in its most fruitful branches,”
Says the Lord God of Israel.

⁷ In that day a man will ^(H)look to his Maker,
And his eyes will have respect for the Holy One of Israel.
⁸ He will not look to the altars,
The work of his hands;
He will not respect what his ^(I)fingers have made,
Nor the ^[d]wooden images nor the incense altars.

⁹ In that day his strong cities will be as a forsaken ^[e]bough
And ^[f]an uppermost branch,
Which they left because of the children of Israel;
And there will be desolation.

¹⁰ Because you have forgotten ^(J)the God of your salvation,
And have not been mindful of the Rock of your ^[g]stronghold,
Therefore you will plant pleasant plants
And set out foreign seedlings;
¹¹ In the day you will make your plant to grow,
And in the morning you will make your seed to flourish;
But the harvest will be a heap of ruins
In the day of grief and desperate sorrow.

¹² Woe to the multitude of many people
Who make a noise ^(K)like the roar of the seas,
And to the rushing of nations
That make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
¹³ The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters;
But God will ^(L)rebuke them and they will flee far away,
And ^(M)be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind,
Like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
¹⁴ Then behold, at eventide, trouble!
And before the morning, he is no more.
This is the portion of those who plunder us,
And the lot of those who rob us.

³ All inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth:
^(O)When he lifts up a banner on the mountains, you see it;
And when he blows a trumpet, you hear it.
⁴ For so the Lord said to me,
“I will take My rest,
And I will ^[i]look from My dwelling place
Like clear heat in sunshine,
Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
⁵ For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect
And the sour grape is ripening in the flower,
He will both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks
And take away and cut down the branches.
⁶ They will be left together for the mountain birds of prey
And for the beasts of the earth;
The birds of prey will summer on them,
And all the beasts of the earth will winter on them.

⁷ In that time ^(P)a present will be brought to the Lord of hosts
^[j]From a people tall and smooth of skin,
And from a people terrible from their beginning onward,
A nation powerful and treading down,
Whose land the rivers divide—
To the place of the name of the Lord of hosts,
To Mount Zion.