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An Oracle concerning Damascus

An oracle concerning Damascus.

See, Damascus will cease to be a city,

and will become a heap of ruins.

Her towns will be deserted forever;

they will be places for flocks,

which will lie down, and no one will make them afraid.

The fortress will disappear from Ephraim,

and the kingdom from Damascus;

and the remnant of Aram will be

like the glory of the children of Israel,

says the L ord of hosts.

On that day

the glory of Jacob will be brought low,

and the fat of his flesh will grow lean.

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.

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 L ord God of Israel.

⁷ On that day people will regard their Maker, and their eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel; ⁸they will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the sacred poles or the altars of incense.

⁹ On that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the Hivites and the Amorites, which they deserted because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation.

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation,

and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;

therefore, though you plant pleasant plants

and set out slips of an alien god,

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 grief and incurable pain.

Ah, the thunder of many peoples,

they thunder like the thundering of the sea!

Ah, the roar of nations,

they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!

The nations roar like the roaring of many waters,

but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,

chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind

and whirling dust before the storm.

At evening time, lo, terror!

Before morning, they are no more.

This is the fate of those who despoil us,

and the lot of those who plunder us.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

1. The burden of Damascus. Here he prophesies against the kingdom of Syria, and mentions the chief city in which the seat of the kingdom lay. It was proper that this calamity, like others which came before it, should be described, that the righteous might confidently believe that God would one day assist them, and would not always permit them to be oppressed by the wicked without end. The king of Syria had formed an alliance with Israel against Judah, as we saw formerly in the seventh chapter; and as the Jews were not able to contend with him, and were deprived of other aids, they might also entertain doubts about God’s assistance, as if he had utterly abandoned them. To free them, therefore, from these doubts, he threatens the destruction of that kingdom, from which they would readily conclude that God fought in defense of his people.

It is uncertain at what time Isaiah uttered this prophecy, for, as I have already remarked, he does not follow the order of time in threatening against each nation the punishment which it deserved. But, as far as I am able to conjecture, he foretold those events at the time when those two kings, that is, the kings of Israel and Syria, invaded Judea, and entered into a league to destroy it and the whole Church, (Isaiah 7:1, 2;) for, by joining together the Israelites and the Syrians, he summons them to a mutual judgment, in order to show that the only advantage which they had derived from the wicked and disgraceful conspiracy was, to be involved in the same destruction. In this manner Isaiah intended to comfort godly persons who were of the tribe of Judah; for he has his eye chiefly on them, that they may not be discouraged, and not on the Syrians, or even the Israelites, whose destruction he foretells.

Behold, Damascus is taken away. The demonstrative particle, Behold, seals the certainty of the prophecy. When he expressly mentions Damascus, it does not follow from this that the other parts of the kingdom are exempted, but it was customary with the prophets to take a part for the whole, so as to include under the destruction of the metropolis the fate of the whole nation; for what must ordinary towns expect when the citadel of the kingdom has been stormed? Yet there is another reason why the Prophets pronounce heavier threatenings on the chief and royal cities, and especially direct their discourse against them. It is, because a polluted flood of crimes overflows from them into the whole country.

2. The cities of Aroer are forsaken. It is not probable that Aroer here denotes the city which is mentioned elsewhere, (Numbers 32:34; Deuteronomy 2:36, 3:12, 4:48;) but it is rather the name of a country. He draws the picture of a country which has been ruined; for he shews that those places in which cities had been built will be devoted to pasture, and that no habitation will be left there but huts and shepherds’ tents; for if any inhabitants remained, the shepherds would drive their flocks to some other place.