Isaiah 17

God’s Message to Aram

1 This is a message about Damascus:
“The city of Damascus will be destroyed; only ruins will remain.

2 People will leave the cities of Aroer. Flocks will wander freely in those empty towns, and there will be no one to bother them.

3 The strong, walled cities of Israel will be destroyed. The government in Damascus will end.
Those left alive of Aram will be like the glory of Israel,” says the Lord All-Powerful.

4 “At that time Israel’s wealth will all be gone. Israel will be like someone who has lost much weight from sickness.

5 That time will be like the grain harvest in the Valley of Rephaim. The workers cut the wheat. Then they cut the heads of grain from the plants and collect the grain.

6 That time will also be like the olive harvest, when a few olives are left.
Two or three olives are left in the top branches. Four or five olives are left on full branches,” says the Lord, the God of Israel.

7 At that time people will look to God, their Maker; their eyes will see the Holy One of Israel.

8 They will not trust the altars they have made, nor will they trust what their hands have made,
not even the Asherah idols and altars.

9 In that day all their strong cities will be empty. They will be like the cities the Hivites and the Amorites left when the Israelites came to take the land. Everything will be ruined.

10 You have forgotten the God who saves you; you have not remembered that God is your place of safety.
You plant the finest grapevines and grapevines from faraway places.

11 You plant your grapevines one day and try to make them grow, and the next day you make them blossom.
But at harvest time everything will be dead; a sickness will kill all the plants.

12 Listen to the many people! Their crying is like the noise from the sea.
Listen to the nations! Their crying is like the crashing of great waves.

13 The people roar like the waves, but when God speaks harshly to them, they will run away.
They will be like chaff on the hills being blown by the wind, or like tumbleweeds blown away by a storm.

14 At night the people will be very frightened. Before morning, no one will be left.
So our enemies will come to our land, but they will become nothing.

Isaiah 17

1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.3 And the fortress shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith Jehovah of hosts.4 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.5 And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing grain, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of Rephaim.6 Yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful tree, saith Jehovah, the God of Israel.7 In that day shall men look unto their Maker, and their eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.8 And they shall not look to the altars, the work of their hands; neither shall they have respect to that which their fingers have made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images.9 In that day shall their strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel; and it shall be a desolation.10 For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength; therefore thou plantest pleasant plants, and settest it with strange slips.11 In the day of thy planting thou hedgest it in, and in the morning thou makest thy seed to blossom; but the harvest fleeth away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples, that roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing of nations, that rush like the rushing of mighty waters!13 The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm.14 At eventide, behold, terror; and before the morning they are not. This is the portion of them that despoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.