Isaiah
There is Damascus being shifted from cityhood to be a wreck; 2** its cities are abandoned forevermore, a covert for flocks, which shall lie down with no one to alarm them. 3 And fortification shall come to an end out of Ephraim, and sovereignty out of Damascus; and the remnant of Syria shall be like the glory of the sons of Israel, quoth Jehovah of Armies. 4 And on that day Jacob’s glory will be brought low and the fat parts in his flesh will dwindle, 5 and it will be like a reaper’s gathering stalks, his arm reaping off ears, and it will be like one gleaning ears in Ghost Hollow, 6 and there will be after-pickings left in it like the beatings of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the tip of a treetop, four or five in the recesses of a heavy bearer, quoth Israel’s God Jehovah.
7 On that day man shall turn his mind to his Maker, and his eyes shall look toward the Holy One of Israel; 8* and he shall not turn his mind to the altars, his own handiwork, nor look at what his fingers have made and the asherahs and the hammans.
9 On that day your cities shall be deserted like the deserted sites of the Hivvites and Amorites, which they deserted before the sons of Israel, and it shall be a desolation, 10* because you have forgotten the God of your salvation and not remembered your citadel Rock. 11 Therefore you shall set out winsome plantings and sow it to exotic climbers, get growth on the day you set them out and sprouts on the morning after your sowing; harvest flits away on a day of disease and desperate suffering.
12* Ha, the uproar of many peoples roaring like the roar of seas, and the hubbub of many a folk tossing like the tossing of a vast water! 13 Folks will toss like the hubbub of a great water, but he will rebuke it and it will flee afar and be driven along like mountain chaff before a wind and like a tumbleweed before a gale. 14 At evening time dissolution is there, and before morning he does not exist. This is the portion of our pillagers, a lot for our plunderers.