1 The oracle about Damascus. Look, Damascus is about to stop being a city; it will become a pile of rubble.
2 The cities of Aroer will be abandoned and left to flocks, which will lie down there with no one to frighten them.
3 Ephraim will lose its fortress and Damascus its kingdom, and what is left of Syria will be like the glory of the children of Israel, declares the LORD of hosts.
4 On that day Jacob's glory will dwindle, and his well-fed body will grow thin.
5 It will be like a reaper gathering up standing grain and harvesting the ears with his arm, like someone collecting ears of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.
6 Some gleanings will remain, as when an olive tree is beaten: two or three olives at the very top, four or five on the branches of the fruit tree, declares the LORD, the God of Israel.
7 On that day people will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
8 They will not look to the altars their hands built or pay attention to what their fingers made, the Asherim and the incense altars.
9 On that day their fortified cities will be like the abandoned places of the forest and the hilltops that were left behind before the children of Israel, and all will be desolate.
10 You have forgotten the God who saves you and have not remembered the Rock where you take refuge. So you set out pleasant plants and sow cuttings from a foreign vine.
11 The day you plant them you get them to grow, and the next morning you make your seed bud; yet the harvest will flee away on the day of disease and pain that has no cure.
12 Woe! The tumult of many peoples, roaring like the roar of the seas! The uproar of nations, crashing like the crash of mighty waters!
13 The nations crash like the crashing of many waters, but he rebukes them and they run far away, driven like chaff on the hills before the wind, like a rolling thistle before the storm wind.
14 In the evening, sudden terror! By morning, they are gone. This is what those who plunder us receive, the share of those who rob us.