An Oracle Concerning Damascus
The aoracle concerning bDamascus.
“Behold, Damascus is about to be cremoved from being a city
And will become a dfallen ruin.
2 The cities of aAroer are forsaken;
They will be for bflocks, and they will lie down in them;
And there will be cno one to cause them to tremble.
3 And the afortified city will cease from Ephraim,
And sovereignty from Damascus
And the remnant of Aram;
They will be like the bglory of the sons of Israel,”
Declares Yahweh of hosts.
4 Now it will be in that day, that the aglory of Jacob will wane,
And bthe fatness of his flesh will become lean.
5 And it will be aeven like the reaper gathering the standing grain,
As his arm harvests the ears of grain,
Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain
In the bvalley of Rephaim.
6 Yet agleanings will remain in it like the shaking of an olive tree,
Two or three olives on the topmost branch,
Four or five on the twigs of a fruitful tree,
Declares Yahweh, the God of Israel.
7 In that day man will ahave regard for his Maker
And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel.
8 He will not have regard for the aaltars, the work of his hands,
Nor will he look to that which his bfingers have made,
Even the cAsherim and incense stands.
9 In that day their strong cities will be like forsaken places in the forest,
Or like branches which they forsook before the sons of Israel;
And the land will be a desolation.
10 For ayou have forgotten the bGod of your salvation
And have not remembered the crock of your strong defense.
Therefore you plant delightful plants
And set them with vine branches of a strange god.
11 In the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in,
And in the amorning you cause your seed to flourish;
But the harvest will bbe a heap
In a day of sickliness and incurable pain.
12 Alas, the uproar of many peoples
aWho roar like the roaring of the seas,
And the rumbling of nations
Who rumble on like the brumbling of mighty waters!
13 The anations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters,
But He will brebuke them, and they will flee far away,
And be pursued clike chaff in the mountains before the wind,
Or like whirling dust before a whirlwind.
14 At evening time, behold, there is terror!
Before morning athey are no more.
Such will be the portion of those who pillage us
And the lot of those who plunder us.
A Message to Ethiopia
Alas, O land of whirring wings
Which lies beyond the rivers of aEthiopia,
2 Which sends envoys by the sea,
Even in apapyrus vessels on the surface of the waters.
Go, swift messengers, to a nation btall and smooth,
To a people cfeared far and wide,
A powerful and oppressive nation
Whose land the rivers divide.
3 aAll you inhabitants of the world and dwellers on earth,
As soon as a standard is raised on the mountains, byou will see it,
And as soon as the trumpet is blown, you will hear it.
4 For thus Yahweh has told me,
“I will look from My adwelling place quietly
Like dazzling heat in the bsunshine,
Like a cloud of cdew in the heat of harvest.”
5 For abefore the harvest, as soon as the bud blossoms
And the flower becomes a ripening grape,
Then He will cut off the sprigs with pruning knives
And remove and cut away the spreading branches.
6 They will be left together for mountain birds aof prey,
And for the beasts of the earth;
And the birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them,
And all the beasts of the earth will spend harvest time on them.
7 At that time a gift of homage will be brought to Yahweh of hosts
From a apeople tall and smooth,
Even from a people feared far and wide,
A powerful and oppressive nation,
Whose land the rivers divide—
To the bplace of the name of Yahweh of hosts, even Mount Zion.