Isaiah Chapter 17
1 Oracle About Damascus
“Damascus will stop being a city,
and become a pile of ruins.
2 The villages around Aroer will be deserted;
flocks will bed down in them,
with no one to chase them away.
3 Fortified towns will disappear from Ephraim,
sovereignty from Damascus
and the remnant from Syria;
they’ll be like Israel’s departed glory,”
Yahveh of hosts says.
Is 17:1-3
4 “At that time, Jacob’s glory will fade;
his robust body will grow frail.
5 It will look like a grainfield after harvest,
like someone gleaning grain heads one at a time
in the Valley of Rephaim.
6 Yet some gleanings will be left—
like shaking an olive tree,
two or three olives on the highest branch,
four or five on a fruitful limb,”
Yahveh God of Israel says.
Is 17:4-6
7 At that time, people will finally care about their Maker and look to the Holy One of Israel. 8 They won’t care about the altars, the work of their hands, or rely on what their fingers have made, the Asherah poles, and incense stands. 9 Their largest towns will be like places the Hivites and Amorites deserted when the Israelites came. Desolation will prevail.
Is 17:7-9
10 You’ve forgotten the God who can save you,
the Rock where you could hide.
So, though you plant nice plants
and set them as seedlings from a foreign god,
11 though you make them sprout the day you plant them,
put a hedge around them
and get them to blossom the same morning —
you won’t pick any grapes from them;
harvest time will be a time of grief and unrelieved pain.
Is 17:10-11
12 Ah, the uproar of many nations
like the roar of the ocean,
like the rumbling of a flash flood!
13 The nations rumble on like flooding water,
but he’ll rebuke them,
and they’ll flee like chaff in the mountain wind,
like whirling dust ahead of a storm.
14 In the evening Israel will wait in terror,
but by morning its enemies will be dead!
That’s what will happen to the ones that plunder us,
a proper end for those who pillage us.
Is 17:12-14