¹The burden of Damascus .

“Behold , Damascus is taken away from being a city , and it will be a ruinous heap .

²The cities of Aroer are forsaken . They will be for flocks , which shall lie down , and no one shall make them afraid .

³The fortress shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus , and the remnant of Syria. They will be as the glory of the children of Israel ,” says the LORD of Armies .

⁴“It will happen in that day that the glory of Jacob will be made thin , and the fatness of his flesh will become lean .

⁵It will be like when the harvester gathers the wheat, and his arm reaps the grain . Yes, it will be like when one gleans grain in the valley of Rephaim .

⁶Yet gleanings will be left there , like the shaking of an olive tree , two or three olives in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outermost branches of a fruitful tree ,” says the LORD , the God of Israel .

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

⁸They will not look to the altars , the work of their hands ; neither shall they respect that which their fingers have made , either the Asherah poles or the incense altars .

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

¹⁰For you have forgotten the God of your salvation , and have not remembered the rock of your strength . Therefore you plant pleasant plants , and set out foreign seedlings.

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

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

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

¹⁴At evening , behold , terror ! Before the morning , they are no more. This is the portion of those who plunder us, and the lot of those who rob us.