1A portent concerning Damascus.
Damascus is to be no more a city
but shall become a heap of ruins.
2The towns of Aroer are abandoned,
become a place for flocks
that bed down there with none troubling them.
3There is an end to the forts in Ephraim
and of kingship in Damascus.
And the remnant of Aram
shall be like what Israel’s glory has become,
says the LORD of Armies.
4And it shall happen on that day,
Jacob’s glory shall turn gaunt
and the fat of his flesh become lean.
5And as he was like one who gathers standing grain,
by armfuls gleaning,
he shall be like one gathering ears of grain
6only gleanings left him, as when an olive tree is beaten,
two or three berries at the top of the bough,
four or five on the branches of the fruit-tree—
says the LORD God of Israel.
7On that day man shall turn to his Maker and his eyes shall look to Israel’s Holy One. 8And he shall not turn to the altars, his handiwork that his fingers made, and he shall not look to the cultic poles and the incense altars. 9On that day his stronghold towns shall be like the abandoned sites of Horesh and Amir that were abandoned because of the Israelites, and it shall become a desolation.
10For you have forgotten the God of your deliverance,
and you have not recalled the Rock, your stronghold.
Therefore did you plant your saplings for vegetal gods,
sow the slip of an alien god.
11The day you plant it, it will flourish,
in the morn your sowing will blossom,
but the roots become a heap on the ill-starred day,
and grievous pain.
12Woe, crowd of many peoples,
like the roar of the seas they roar.
and the clamor of nations
like the clamor of mighty waters they clamor.
13Nations like the clamor of many waters they clamor,
but He rebukes them and they flee far away,
driven like chaff in the hills before wind
and like tumbleweed in the whirlwind.
14At eventide, look—terror!
Before morning it is no more.
This is the lot of our despoilers
and the fate of our plunderers.
CHAPTER 17 NOTES
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1. Damascus. This is the capital city of Syria, or Aram, with which the northern kingdom of Israel allied itself. Hence a prophecy of the destruction of both, as their bracketing in verse 3 emphasizes.
4. Jacob’s glory shall turn gaunt. Some interpreters try to make this verset more “logical” by rendering kavod as “body,” a sense it probably does not have, or “weight,” again a dubious sense, even if the related adjective kaved does mean “heavy.” Poetic expression need not have this kind of neat consistency.
5. And as he was like one who gathers standing grain. Although this is the clear sense of this clause, it must be said that the syntax of this entire verse and the next one is quite crabbed.
the Valley of Rephaim. One infers from the context that this was a place that produced meager crops. It may be relevant that the place-name means Ghost Valley.
7. On that day man shall turn to his Maker. What leads him to turn away from the sites of idolatry to God is, as verse 8 makes clear, the destruction that will be wreaked on Israel.
10. the Rock. Though this is a common epithet for God in Psalms, the hardness of rock also forms a nice antithesis to the saplings and slips planted as part of the cult of nature gods.
saplings for vegetal gods. The Hebrew seems to say “saplings of the pleasant ones,” but naʿaman is probably a designation for Tammuz, the god who dies annually and is reborn each spring. Blenkinsopp is a bit too specific, and too Greek, in translating this as “Adonis.”
11. but the roots become a heap on the ill-starred day. Of the four Hebrew words of this verset, the only one whose meaning is certain is beyom, “on the day.”
12. Woe, crowd of many peoples. This marks a new prophecy, concerning not Damascus but the many nations that have despoiled Israel. The identification of a specific historical event has proved elusive. Although some scholars are inclined to attribute this prophecy to Isaiah, one reason to be skeptical about the attribution is that the poetry is in no way on the level of the great poetry of the book’s first chapters: both the simile of the roar of the seas and the wind-driven chaff (verse 13) are biblical clichés, and the verbatim repetition of the second half of verse 12 in the first half of 13 seems inert.