17:1 The pronouncement concerning Damascus:
“Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city
And will become a fallen ruin.
17:2 The cities ①of Aroer are abandoned;
They will be for herds ②to lie down in,
And there will be no one to frighten them.
▷ ①LXX forever and ever ②Lit and they will lie down
17:3 The ①fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
And ②sovereignty from Damascus
And the remnant of Aram;
They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel,”
Declares the LORD of armies.
▷ ①Or fortification ②Or royal power
17:4 Now on that day the glory of Jacob will ①fade,
And the fatness of his flesh will become lean.
▷ ①Lit become little
17:5 It will be like the ①reaper gathering the standing grain,
As his arm harvests the ears,
Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain
In the Valley of Rephaim.
▷ ①Lit gathering of the harvest, the standing grain
17:6 Yet gleanings will be left in it like the ①shaking of an olive tree,
Two or three olives on the topmost branch,
Four or five on the branches of a fruitful tree,
Declares the LORD, the God of Israel.
▷ ①Lit striking
17:7 On that day man will look to his Maker
And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel.
17:8 And he will not look to the altars, the work of his hands,
Nor will he look to that which his fingers have made,
Even the ①Asherim and incense altars.
▷ ①I.e., wooden symbols of a female deity (Asherah)
17:9 On that day ①their strong cities will be like ②abandoned places in the forest,
Or like branches which they abandoned before the sons of Israel;
And ③the land will be a desolation.
▷ ①Lit his; i.e., mankind’s ②LXX the deserted places of the Amorites and the Hivites which they abandoned ③Lit it
17:10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation
And have not remembered the rock of your refuge.
Therefore you plant delightful plants
And set them with vine shoots of a strange god.
17:11 On the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in,
And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom;
But the harvest will flee
On a day of illness and incurable pain.
17:12 Oh, the uproar of many peoples
Who roar like the roaring of the seas,
And the rumbling of nations
Who rush on like the rumbling of mighty waters!
17:13 The nations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters,
But He will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,
And be chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind,
Or like whirling dust before a gale.
17:14 At evening time, behold, there is terror!
Before morning they are gone.
This will be the ①fate of those who plunder us
And the lot of those who pillage us.
▷ ①Lit portion