Isaiah

¹ An oracle concerning Damascus: “See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins.

² and left to flocks, which will lie down, with no one to make them afraid.

³ and royal power from Damascus; the remnant of Aram will be like the glory of the Israelites,” declares the Lord Almighty.

⁴ the fat of his body will waste away.

⁵ and harvests the grain with his arm— as when a man gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.

⁶ as when an olive tree is beaten, leaving two or three olives on the topmost branches, four or five on the fruitful boughs,” declares the Lord, the God of Israel.

⁷ and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.

⁸ the work of their hands, and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles and the incense altars their fingers have made.

⁹ In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation.

¹⁰ you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress. Therefore, though you set out the finest plants and plant imported vines,

¹¹ and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud, yet the harvest will be as nothing in the day of disease and incurable pain.

¹² they rage like the raging sea! Oh, the uproar of the peoples— they roar like the roaring of great waters!

¹³ when he rebukes them they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills, like tumbleweed before a gale.

¹⁴ Before the morning, they are gone! This is the portion of those who loot us, the lot of those who plunder us.