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¹ The burden of Damascus. Look, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.² The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.³ And the fortress shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the sons of Israel, says Yahweh of hosts.⁴ And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.⁵ And it shall be as when one gathers the harvest of standing grain, and his arm reaps the ears; yes, it shall be as when one gleans ears in the valley of Rephaim.

⁶ Yet there shall be left therein 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 shall look to their Maker, and their eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.⁸ And they shall not look to the altars, the work of their hands; neither shall they have respect to that which their fingers have made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images.

⁹ In that day their strong cities shall be as the forsaken places in the forest and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the sons of Israel; and it shall 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 shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall 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 that despoil us, and the lot of those that rob us.