The Hebrew Prophets

Therefore my heart laments for Moab like a harp, my inmost being for Kir-heres.

When Moab appears on the high place, when he wearies himself and enters his sanctuary to pray, it will do him no good.

This is the message that the LORD spoke earlier concerning Moab.

And now the LORD says, “In three years, as a hired worker counts the years, Moab’s splendor will become an object of contempt, with all her many people. And those who are left will be few and feeble.”

This is the burden against Damascus: “Behold, Damascus is no longer a city; it has become a heap of ruins.

The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they will be left to the flocks, which will lie down with no one to fear.

The fortress will disappear from Ephraim, and the sovereignty from Damascus. The remnant of Aram will be like the splendor of the Israelites,” declares the LORD of Hosts.

“In that day the splendor of Jacob will fade, and the fat of his body will waste away,

as the reaper gathers the standing grain and harvests the ears with his arm, as one gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.

Yet gleanings will remain, like an olive tree that has been beaten— two or three berries atop the tree, four or five on its fruitful branches,” declares the LORD, the God of Israel.

In that day men will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.

They will not look to the altars they have fashioned with their hands or to the Asherahs and incense altars they have made with their fingers.

In that day their strong cities will be like forsaken thickets and summits, abandoned to the Israelites and to utter desolation.

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and failed to remember the Rock of your refuge. Therefore, though you cultivate delightful plots and set out cuttings from exotic vines—

though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout— yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.

Alas, the tumult of many peoples; they rage like the roaring seas and clamoring nations; they rumble like the crashing of mighty waters.

The nations rage like the rush of many waters. He rebukes them, and they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills, like tumbleweeds before a gale.

In the evening, there is sudden terror! Before morning, they are no more! This is the portion of those who loot us and the lot of those who plunder us.

Woe to the land of whirring wings, along the rivers of Cush,

which sends couriers by sea, in papyrus vessels on the waters. Go, swift messengers, to a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people widely feared, to a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers.

All you people of the world and dwellers of the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it; when a ram’s horn sounds, you will hear it.

For this is what the LORD has told me: “I will quietly look on from My dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”

For before the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape, He will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife and remove and discard the branches.

They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey, and to the beasts of the land. The birds will feed on them in summer, and all the wild animals in winter.

At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD of Hosts— from a people tall and smooth-skinned, from a people widely feared, from a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers— to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the LORD of Hosts.