53 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
53 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
# Chapter 17
|
||
1 This message came to me concerning Damascus:
|
||
“Look, the city of Damascus will disappear!
|
||
It will become a heap of ruins.
|
||
2 The towns of Aroer will be deserted.
|
||
Flocks will graze in the streets and lie down undisturbed,
|
||
with no one to chase them away.
|
||
3 The fortified towns of Israel will also be destroyed,
|
||
and the royal power of Damascus will end.
|
||
All that remains of Syria
|
||
will share the fate of Israel’s departed glory,”
|
||
declares the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
|
||
4 “In that day Israel’s glory will grow dim;
|
||
its robust body will waste away.
|
||
5 The whole land will look like a grainfield
|
||
after the harvesters have gathered the grain.
|
||
It will be desolate,
|
||
like the fields in the valley of Rephaim after the harvest.
|
||
6 Only a few of its people will be left,
|
||
like stray olives left on a tree after the harvest.
|
||
Only two or three remain in the highest branches,
|
||
four or five scattered here and there on the limbs,”
|
||
declares the Lord, the God of Israel.
|
||
7 Then at last the people will look to their Creator
|
||
and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
|
||
8 They will no longer look to their idols for help
|
||
or worship what their own hands have made.
|
||
They will never again bow down to their Asherah poles
|
||
or worship at the pagan shrines they have built.
|
||
9 Their largest cities will be like a deserted forest,
|
||
like the land the Hivites and Amorites abandoned
|
||
when the Israelites came here so long ago.
|
||
It will be utterly desolate.
|
||
10 Why? Because you have turned from the God who can save you.
|
||
You have forgotten the Rock who can hide you.
|
||
So you may plant the finest grapevines
|
||
and import the most expensive seedlings.
|
||
11 They may sprout on the day you set them out;
|
||
yes, they may blossom on the very morning you plant them,
|
||
but you will never pick any grapes from them.
|
||
Your only harvest will be a load of grief and unrelieved pain.
|
||
12 Listen! The armies of many nations
|
||
roar like the roaring of the sea.
|
||
Hear the thunder of the mighty forces
|
||
as they rush forward like thundering waves.
|
||
13 But though they thunder like breakers on a beach,
|
||
God will silence them, and they will run away.
|
||
They will flee like chaff scattered by the wind,
|
||
like a tumbleweed whirling before a storm.
|
||
14 In the evening Israel waits in terror,
|
||
but by dawn its enemies are dead.
|
||
This is the just reward of those who plunder us,
|
||
a fitting end for those who destroy us. |