Rhyming Isaiah, Chapter 17

Rhyming Isaiah, Chapter 17

This oracle, about Damascus, is.

“To be a city will Damascus cease,
and what she will become: a heap of ruins.
Forever will, deserted, be, her towns;
for flocks, they will be places, which lie down
and rest, there’s no one to disturb them there.
From Ephraim will its fortress disappear,
from sovereignty, away, Damascus veers;
and then how Aram’s remnant will be like,
the glory of the children, Israelite,”
this is the word of him the LORD of Hosts.

“That day will Jacob’s glory be brought low,
and lean, how, of his flesh, its fat will grow.
As when a reaper gathers standing grain
by armfuls, ears, what they are harvesting,
or as one gleans the ears in Rephaim’s vale,
or as when beaten is the olive tree
and only gleanings are left to retrieve,
they’re on the topmost branch, two berries, three,
upon its fruitful boughs, just five, or four,”
the LORD, the God of Is’rael, this, his word.

That day, a man will, to his Maker, look,
his eyes, to Israel’s Holy One, will train.
He will no longer, to his handiwork,
look to his altars, or what they have made,
such worship objects, by his fingers, own,
the incense altars and the sacred poles.

That day, how their strong cities will be like
the places of the Hivites, Amorites
that they deserted at Is’rael’s advance,
those they abandoned, they shall be laid waste.

Since you, of your deliverance, forgot,
the God who saved you, also, you did not
remember him, your stronghold place, your Rock.
Therefore, though you will, pleasure gardens, plant,
out for a foreign god, your cuttings, set,
the day you plant them, you get them to grow,
they’re flow’ring in the morning when you sow,
yet quickly, on, that harvest fades away,
of grief, pain that’s incurable, the day.

Disaster! It’s the thunder of vast hordes,
a thunder like the thunder of the sea!
The nations, how, like mighty floods, they roar,
but he rebukes them, far away they flee,
on mountains, chased like chaff, the wind, before,
and whirling dust that blows before the storm.
In evening time, it’s terror that they spread!
But by the morning time they’ve disappeared.
Of those who, us, despoil, this is their fate,
of those who plunder us, this is their lot.