Isaiah 17-18

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

See, Damascus will cease to be a city
    and will become a heap of ruins.^(A)
2 Her towns will be deserted forever;^[a]
    they will be places for flocks,
    which will lie down, and no one will make them afraid.^(B)
3 The fortress will disappear from Ephraim
    and the kingdom from Damascus,
and the remnant of Aram will be
    like the glory of the people of Israel,
            says the Lord of hosts.^(C)

⁴ On that day
    the glory of Jacob will be brought low,
    and the fat of his flesh will grow lean.^(D)
5 And it shall be as when reapers gather standing grain
    and their arms harvest the ears,
and as when one gleans the ears of grain
    in the Valley of Rephaim.^(E)
6 Gleanings will be left in it,
    as when an olive tree is beaten—
two or three berries
    in the top of the highest bough,
four or five
    on the branches of a fruit tree,
            says the Lord God of Israel.^(F)

¹⁰ For you have forgotten God your Savior
    and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;
therefore, though you plant pleasant gardens
    and set out branches of a foreign god,^(J)
11 though you make them grow on the day that you plant them
    and make them blossom in the morning that you sow,
yet the harvest will flee away
    in a day of sickness and incurable pain.^(K)

¹² Woe, the thunder of many peoples,
    they thunder like the thundering of the sea!
The roar of nations,
    they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!^(L)
13 [[When the nations roar like the roaring of many waters,]]^[d]
    he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,
chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind
    and like whirling dust before the storm.^(M)
14 At evening time, sudden terror!
    Before morning, they are no more.
This is the fate of those who despoil us
    and the lot of those who plunder us.^(N)

³ All you inhabitants of the world,
    you who live on the earth,
when a signal is raised on the mountains, look!
    When a trumpet is blown, listen!^(Q)
4 For thus the Lord said to me:
“I will quietly look from my dwelling
    like clear heat in sunshine,
    like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”^(R)
5 For before the harvest, when the blossom is over
    and the flower becomes a ripening grape,
he will cut off the shoots with pruning hooks,
    and the spreading branches he will hew away.^(S)
6 They shall all be left
    to the birds of prey of the mountains
    and to the animals of the earth.
And the birds of prey will summer on them,
    and all the animals of the earth will winter on them.^(T)