Damascus Will Be Punished
1 This is a message about Damascus:
Damascus is doomed!
It will end up in ruins.
2 The villages around Aroer
will be deserted,
with only sheep living there
and no one to bother them.
3 Israel will lose its fortresses.
The kingdom of Damascus
will be destroyed;
its survivors will suffer
the same fate as Israel.
The Lord All-Powerful
has promised this.
Sin and Suffering
4 When that time comes,
the glorious nation of Israel
will be brought down;
its prosperous people
will be skin and bones.
5 Israel will be like wheat fields
in Rephaim Valley
picked clean of grain.
6 It will be like an olive tree
beaten with a stick,
leaving two or three olives
or maybe four or five
on the highest
or most fruitful branches.
The Lord God of Israel
has promised this.
7 At that time the people will turn and trust their Creator, the holy God of Israel. 8 They have built altars and places for burning incense to their goddess Asherah, and they have set up sacred poles for her. But they will stop worshiping at these places.
9 Israel captured powerful cities and chased out the people who lived there. But these cities will lie in ruins, covered over with weeds and underbrush.
10 Israel, you have forgotten
the God who saves you,
the one who is the mighty rock
where you find protection.
You plant the finest flowers
to honor a foreign god.
11 The plants may sprout
and blossom
that very same morning,
but it will do you no good,
because you will suffer
endless agony.
God Defends His People
12 The nations are a noisy,
thunderous sea.
13 But even if they roar
like a fearsome flood,
God will give the command
to turn them back.
They will be like dust,
or like a tumbleweed
blowing across the hills
in a windstorm.
14 In the evening
their attack is fierce,
but by morning
they are destroyed.
This is what happens to those
who raid and rob us.
1 The burden of Damascus. Beholde, Damascus is taken away from being a citie, for it shall be a ruinous heape. 2 The cities of Aroer shall be forsaken: they shall be for the flockes: for they shall lye there, and none shall make them afraide. 3 The munition also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdome from Damascus, and the remnant of Aram shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, sayeth the Lord of hostes. 4 And in that day the glorie of Iaakob shall be impouerished, and the fatnes of his flesh shalbe made leane. 5 And it shalbe as when the haruest man gathereth the corne, and reapeth the eares with his arme, and he shall be as he that gathereth the eares in the valley of Rephaim. 6 Yet a gathering of grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an oliue tree, two or three beries are in the top of the vpmost boughes, and foure or fiue in the hie branches of the fruite thereof, sayeth the Lord God of Israel. 7 At that day shall a man looke to his maker, and his eyes shall looke to the holy one of Israel. 8 And hee shall not looke to the altars, the workes of his owne hands, neither shall he looke to those thinges, which his owne fingers haue made, as groues and images. 9 In that day shall the cities of their strength be as the forsaking of boughes and branches, which they did forsake, because of the children of Israel, and there shall be desolation. 10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy saluation, and hast not remembred the God of thy strength, therefore shalt thou set pleasant plantes, and shalt graffe strange vine branches: 11 In the day shalt thou make thy plant to growe, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seede to florish: but the haruest shall be gone in the day of possession, and there shalbe desperate sorrowe. 12 Ah, the multitude of many people, they shall make a sounde like the noyse of the sea: for the noyse of the people shall make a sounde like the noyse of mightie waters. 13 The people shall make a sounde like the noise of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee farre off, and shalbe chased as the chaffe of the mountaines before the winde, and as a rolling thing before the whirlewinde. 14 And loe, in the euening there is trouble: but afore the morning it is gone. This is the portion of them that spoyle vs, and the lot of them that robbe vs.