Eternal One: So much for the “city of Damascus.”
        It’s done for. Soon it will be just a pile of rubble.
²     The towns around it^[a] will empty of people and be turned back to open land.
        Imagine—sheep grazing and lying down where people used to live.
    There won’t be a soul to scare them off.
³     The defenses of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, will fall—
        Ephraim’s fortress walls will tumble down;
    Damascus will no longer rule itself.
        Aram—what is left of them—will resemble Israel’s fading glory.

⁴ Eternal One: Israel will be humbled then too;
        our cousins, the children of Jacob, will lose their luster, their wealth and excess.
⁵     The land will resemble a field stripped until it is nearly bare,
        like when the harvest has come and gone,
        like the meager grain gleaned in the valley of Rephaim.

⁶     But some gleanings will remain
        like when olive trees are beaten,
    Where two or three olives remain at the top of a tree
        and four or five hold on tight to its fruitful branches.

⁷ Then, in that day, people will turn to the One who shaped them.
    They’ll look on the Creator, the Holy One of Israel,
⁸ And disregard the things they’d made into gods.
    They’ll turn away from worthless, handmade objects, sacred poles, and incense altars.

⁹ And then, in that day, their great cities will be abandoned
    like defenseless outposts in a hilly forest,
Like those deserted when the Israelites took the land;
    the scene will be eerily quiet and empty.

¹⁰ You have proven forgetful of God—how God pulls you clear of danger,
    how God stands firm, like a great Rock where you can take shelter.
Because you have forgotten the one True God,
    you planted pleasant gardens and set out tender vines of a strange god.
¹¹ They sprouted so quickly the day you set them out;
    they budded immediately the morning you planted them;
But you will never gather any sweet grapes from them.
    What you reap will be illness and pain; that day will be filled with sadness.

¹² Listen to the restless roar of the peoples!
    They roar like a fitful sea.
Listen to the crashing thunder of the nations;
    they thunder like a powerful surge of water.
¹³ But even if they thunder like a wall of water,
    when God rebukes them, they will run far away;
With a word they’ll be driven like chaff in a mountain gust
    or dust in a windstorm.
¹⁴ In the evening, look, their enemies terrorize them;
    but by morning, they’re gone.
So it will be for those who attack and steal from us;
    those who take, take, take will come to nothing and run away.