(Jeremiah 49:23–27)
1
Isaiah received this message from Yahweh about Damascus, the capital of Aram: “Listen carefully! Damascus will no longer be a city; it will be only a heap of ruins!
2
The towns near the city of Aroer will be abandoned. Flocks of sheep will eat grass in the streets and lie down there, and there will be no one to chase them away.
3
The cities in Israel will not have walls around them to protect them. The power of the kingdom of Damascus will be ended, and the few people who will remain in Aram will be disgraced like the people in Israel were disgraced.” That is what Yahweh, Commander of the angel armies, says.
4
“At that time, Israel will become insignificant. It will be like a fat person who has become very thin.
5
The entire land will be like a field where the harvesters have cut all the grain; there will be nothing left, like the fields in the Valley of Rephaim after all the crops have been harvested.
6
Only a few of the Israelite people will remain, like the few olives that remain on the top of a tree after the workers have shaken all the other olives to the ground. There will be only two or three olives in the top branches, or four or five olives on the other branches.” That is what Yahweh, Commander of the angel armies, says.
7
Then at that time, you people of Israel will trust in God, your creator, the Holy One of Israel.
8
You will no longer seek to get help from your idols or worship the idols that you have made with your own hands. You will never again bow down in front of the poles where you worshiped the goddess Asherah. You will never again worship at the high places that you have built to burn incense to idols.
9
The largest cities in Israel will be abandoned, like the land that the Hiv and Amor people groups abandoned when the Israelites attacked them long ago. No people will live there.
10
That will happen because you have stopped worshiping God, who is like a huge rock on top of which you can be safe. You have forgotten that he is the one who can hide you. So now you plant very nice grapevines and even unusual ones that come from other countries.
11
But even if they sprout leaves on the day you plant them, and even if they produce blossoms on that same morning, at harvest time, there will not be any grapes for you to pick. All that you will get is much agony and suffering.
12
Listen! The armies of many nations will roar like the sea roars. It will sound like noise of crashing waves.
13
But even though their loud roaring will be like the sound of crashing waves, when Yahweh rebukes them, they will run far away. They will flee like chaff on the hills scatters when the wind blows, like tumbleweeds scatter when a windstorm blows.
14
And even though you people of Israel will be terrified, in the morning your enemies will all be gone. That is what will happen to those who invade our land and steal our possessions.
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