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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)
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)
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)

On that day
    the glory of Jacob will be brought low,
    and the fat of his flesh will grow lean.(D)
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)
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)

On that day people will look to their Maker, with their eyes on the Holy One of Israel;(G) 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)

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)

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Footnotes

  1. 17.2 Cn Compare Gk: Heb the cities of Aroer are deserted
  2. 17.8 Heb Asherahs
  3. 17.9 Cn Compare Gk: Heb places of the wood and the highest bough