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17. Oracle Against Damacus

¹ A prophecy against Damascus:

   “See, Damascus will no longer be a city
   but will become a heap of ruins.
² The cities of Aroer will be deserted
   and left to flocks, which will lie down,
   with no one to make them afraid.
³ The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
   and royal power from Damascus;
the remnant of Aram will be
   like the glory of the Israelites,” declares the LORD Almighty.

    ⁴ “In that day the glory of Jacob will fade;
   the fat of his body will waste away.
⁵ It will be as when reapers harvest the standing grain,
   gathering the grain in their arms—
as when someone gleans heads of grain
   in the Valley of Rephaim.
⁶ Yet some gleanings will remain,
   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 In 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,
   the work of their hands,
and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah
   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 forgotten God your Savior;
   you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
   and plant imported vines,
¹¹ though on the day you set them out, you make them grow,
   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 Woe to the many nations that rage—
   they rage like the raging sea!
Woe to the peoples who roar—
   they roar like the roaring of great waters!
¹³ Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters,
   when he rebukes them they flee far away,
driven before the wind like chaff on the hills,
   like tumbleweed before a gale.
¹⁴ In the evening, sudden terror!
   Before the morning, they are gone!
This is the portion of those who loot us,
   the lot of those who plunder us.

5. And it shall be as when the harvest-man gathereth the corn. He shews by a comparison how great will be the desolation. “As the reapers,” he says, “gather the corn in armfuls, so this multitude, though large and extended, will be mowed down by the enemies.” Now that he may not leave a remainder, he adds that at the conclusion of the harvest the ears will be gleaned, as if he had said, that when the multitude shall have been destroyed and the country laid bare like a field which has been reaped, even the shaken and scattered ears will not be left. Besides, he employs the metaphor of a harvest because the people, trusting to their great number, dreaded nothing; but as the reapers are not terrified by the large quantity of the corn, so he declares that their vast number will not prevent God from utterly destroying them. This may also refer to the Assyrians, but the meaning will be the same, for they were God’s servants in executing this vengeance.

We need not spend much time in explaining the word gather, for it means nothing else than that the slaughter will resemble a harvest, the conclusion of which has been followed by the gleaning of the ears. When the ten tribes had been carried away, the Assyrians, having learned that they were meditating a revolution, destroyed them also (2 Kings 17:4). He especially mentions the valley of Rephaim, because its fertility was well known to the Israelites.