The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. 2The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. 3The fortress shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of Bani-Israel, says Allah, Lord of the universe. 4It shall happen in that day, that the glory of Yaqub shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall become lean. 5It shall be as when the harvester gathers the standing grain, and his arm reaps the ears; yes, it shall be as when one gleans ears in the valley of Rephaim. 6Yet 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 outmost branches of a fruitful tree, says Allah, the God of Israel. 7In that day shall men look to their Maker, and their eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. 8They 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. 9In that day shall their strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before Bani-Israel; and it shall be a desolation. 10For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not been mindful of the rock of your strength; therefore you plant pleasant plants, and set it with strange slips. 11In 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. 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 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. 14At evening, behold, terror; and before the morning they are no more. This is the portion of those who despoil us, and the lot of those who rob us.