Isaiah 17
17
Damascus: A Pile of Dust and Rubble
1-3A Message concerning Damascus:
“Watch this: Damascus undone as a city,
a pile of dust and rubble!
Her towns emptied of people.
The sheep and goats will move in
And take over the towns
as if they owned them—which they will!
Not a sign of a fort is left in Ephraim,
not a trace of government left in Damascus.
What’s left of Aram?
The same as what’s left of Israel—not much.”
Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
The Day Is Coming
4-6“The Day is coming when Jacob’s robust splendor goes pale
and his well-fed body turns skinny.
The country will be left empty, picked clean
as a field harvested by field hands.
She’ll be like a few stalks of barley left standing
in the lush Valley of Rephaim after harvest,
Or like the couple of ripe olives overlooked
in the top of the olive tree,
Or the four or five apples
that the pickers couldn’t reach in the orchard.”
Decree of the God of Israel.
7-8Yes, the Day is coming when people will notice The One Who Made Them, take a long hard look at The Holy of Israel. They’ll lose interest in all the stuff they’ve made—altars and monuments and rituals, their homemade, handmade religion—however impressive it is.
9And yes, the Day is coming when their fortress cities will be abandoned—the very same cities that the Hivites and Amorites abandoned when Israel invaded! And the country will be empty, desolate.
You Have Forgotten God
10-11And why? Because you have forgotten God-Your-Salvation,
not remembered your Rock-of-Refuge.
And so, even though you are very religious,
planting all sorts of bushes and herbs and trees
to honor and influence your fertility gods,
And even though you make them grow so well,
bursting with buds and sprouts and blossoms,
Nothing will come of them. Instead of a harvest
you’ll get nothing but grief and pain, pain, pain.
12-13Oh my! Thunder! A thundering herd of people!
Thunder like the crashing of ocean waves!
Nations roaring, roaring,
like the roar of a massive waterfall,
Roaring like a deafening Niagara!
But God will silence them with a word,
And then he’ll blow them away like dead leaves off a tree,
like down from a thistle.
14At bedtime, terror fills the air.
By morning it’s gone—not a sign of it anywhere!
This is what happens to those who would ruin us,
this is the fate of those out to get us.
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Isaiah 17: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Isaiah 17
17
Isaiah 17
1¶ 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 succour of Ephraim shall cease, and the kingdom from Damascus and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the sons of Israel, saith the Lord of the hosts.
4And in that day it shall come to pass that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
5And it shall be as when the harvestman gathers the sheaves and reaps the grain with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathers grain in the valley of Rephaim.
6¶ Yet gleaning shall be left in it as when the olive tree is shaken; two or three berries are left in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the Lord God of Israel.
7At that day man shall look to his Maker, and his eyes shall see the Holy One of Israel.
8And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands; neither shall he look upon that which his fingers have made, either the groves or the images of the sun.
9¶ In that day the cities of his strength shall be as the gleanings which remain on the shoots and on the branches, which were left of the sons of Israel; and there shall be desolation.
10Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy saving health and hast not been mindful of the Rock of thy strength; therefore thou shalt plant pleasant plants and set it with strange slips:
11In the day that thou shalt plant them, thou shalt make them to grow and shalt make thy seed to flourish early; but in the day of gathering, the harvest shall flee and shall be desperate sorrow.
12¶ Woe to the multitude of many peoples, which shall make a noise like the noise of the sea; and the rushing of nations, that make an uprising like the rushing of mighty waters!
13The peoples shall make noise like the rushing of great waters, but God shall reprehend them, and they shall flee far off and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind and like the tumbleweed before the whirlwind.
14And behold at eveningtide trouble, and before the morning she is not. This is the portion of them that tread on us and the lot of them that spoil us.
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The Jubilee Bible 2000 (JUB) by Ransom Press International