1 The burden of Damascus. Look, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it will be a ruinous heap.

2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they will be for flocks, which will lie down, and none will make them afraid.

3 And the fortress will cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they will be as the glory of the sons of Israel, says Yahweh of hosts.

4 And it will come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob will be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh will wax lean.

5 And it will be as when one gathers the harvest of standing grain, and his arm reaps the ears; yes, it will be as when one gleans ears in the valley of Rephaim.

6 Yet there will be left in it gleanings, as the shaking of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outermost branches of a fruitful tree, says Yahweh, the God of Israel.

7 In that day man will look to their Maker, and their eyes will have respect to the Holy One of Israel.

8 And they will not look to the altars, the work of their hands; neither will they have respect to that which their fingers have made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images.

9 In that day their strong cities will be as the forsaken places in the forest and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the sons of Israel; and it will be a desolation.

10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and haven't been mindful of the rock of your strength; therefore you plant pleasant plants, and set it with strange slips.

11 In the day of your planting you hedge it in, and in the morning you make your seed to blossom; but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.

12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples, that roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing of nations, that rush like the rushing of mighty waters!

13 The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters: but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far off, and will be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm.

14 At evening, look, terror; [and] before the morning they are not. This is the portion of those who despoil us, and the lot of those who rob us.