Isaiah 17

Contemporary English Version

Damascus Will Be Punished

17 ^(A) This is a message about Damascus:

Damascus is doomed!
    It will end up in ruins.
²The villages around Aroer^[a]
    will be deserted,
with only sheep living there
    and no one to bother them.
³Israel^[b] will lose its fortresses.
The kingdom of Damascus
    will be destroyed;
its survivors will suffer
    the same fate as Israel.
The Lord All-Powerful
    has promised this.

Sin and Suffering

⁴When that time comes,
the glorious nation of Israel
    will be brought down;
its prosperous people
    will be skin and bones.
⁵Israel will be like wheat fields
in Rephaim Valley
    picked clean of grain.
⁶It will be like an olive tree
    beaten with a stick,
leaving two or three olives
    or maybe four or five
on the highest
    or most fruitful branches.
The Lord God of Israel
    has promised this.

⁷At that time the people will turn and trust their Creator, the holy God of Israel. ⁸They have built altars and places for burning incense to their goddess Asherah, and they have set up sacred poles^[c] for her. But they will stop worshiping at these places.

⁹Israel captured powerful cities and chased out the people who lived there. But these cities will lie in ruins, covered over with weeds and underbrush.^[d]

¹⁰Israel, you have forgotten
    the God who saves you,
the one who is the mighty rock^[e]
    where you find protection.
You plant the finest flowers
    to honor a foreign god.
¹¹The plants may sprout
and blossom
    that very same morning,
but it will do you no good,
because you will suffer
    endless agony.

God Defends His People

¹²The nations are a noisy,
    thunderous sea.
¹³But even if they roar
    like a fearsome flood,
God will give the command
    to turn them back.
They will be like dust,
    or like a tumbleweed
blowing across the hills
    in a windstorm.
¹⁴In the evening
    their attack is fierce,
but by morning
    they are destroyed.
This is what happens to those
    who raid and rob us.

Footnotes

17.2 Aroer: Either a city near Damascus with the same name as the Moabite city or the Moabite city itself, here used as an example of what will happen to Damascus.
17.3 Israel: The Hebrew text has “Ephraim,” another name for the northern kingdom.
17.8 sacred poles: Or “trees,” used as symbols of Asherah, the goddess of fertility.
17.9 covered … underbrush: Hebrew; one ancient translation “like the cities of the Hivites and the Amorites.”
17.10 mighty rock: The Hebrew text has “rock,” which is sometimes used in poetry to compare the Lord to a mountain where his people can run for protection from their enemies.