1. Proclamation about Damascus: Damascus will soon cease to be a city, it will become a heap of ruins.

2. Its towns, abandoned for ever, will be pastures for flocks; there they will rest with no one to disturb them.

3. Ephraim will be stripped of its defences and Damascus of its sovereignty; and the remnant of Aram will be treated like the glory of the Israelites -- declares Yahweh Sabaoth.

4. When that day comes, Jacob's glory will diminish, from being fat he will grow lean;

5. as when a reaper gathers in the standing corn, harvesting the ears of corn with his arm, or when they glean the ears in the Valley of Rephaim,

6. nothing will remain but pickings, as when an olive tree is beaten; two or three berries left on the topmost bough, four or five berries on the branches of the tree -- declares Yahweh, God of Israel.

7. That day, a man will look to his Creator and his eyes will turn to the Holy One of Israel.

8. He will no longer look to altars, his own handiwork, or to what his own fingers have made: the sacred poles and incense-altars.

9. That day, its cities of refuge will be abandoned as were the woods and heaths at the Israelites' advance: there will be desolation.

10. Since you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and failed to keep the Rock, your refuge, in mind, you plant pleasure-gardens, you sow exotic seeds;

11. the day you plant them, you get them to sprout, and, next morning, your seedlings are in flower; but the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.

12. Disaster! The thunder of vast hordes, a thunder like the thunder of the seas, the roar of nations roaring like the roar of mighty floods,

13. of nations roaring like the roar of ocean! He rebukes them and far away they flee, driven like chaff on the mountains before the wind, like an eddy of dust before the storm.

14. At evening all is terror, by morning all have disappeared. Such will be the lot of those who plunder us, such, the fate of our despoilers.