Is Damascus about to be nuked?

Run_to_da_hills

"The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap" Isaiah 17:1

With the stuff that is going on out there at the moment the above seems quite possible.

Peregrinus

My, but aren't we spreading good cheer today! :-)

Realistically, in current conditions, I don't see anybody who has the capacity for a nuclear strike on Damascus having the least incentive to launch one. Whatever other problems the Damascenes face, I don't think this is one.

Isaiah’s “oracle against Damascus” forms part of a long series of similar prognostications against most places of any significance in the Middle East. - Judah, Jerusalem, Edom, Babylon, Philistia, Moab, Egypt, the Negev, Elam, Media, Dumah, Tyre, Sidon, Samaria. . . . It’s difficult to find a place of any significance in the Middle East about which Isaiah does not record an oracle of doom and destruction.

This is of course an enormous boon to “end times” enthusiasts seeking to find scriptural evidence in support of their theories; whenever there is conflict in the region (and when was there not?) they simply pick up Isaiah and flip through the pages until they find the appropriate oracle. They then argue, or simply assume, that the brouhaha to which Isaiah refers can only be today’s brouhaha, as opposed any past or future brouhaha, which proves that (a) Biblical Prophecy Is True! and (b) The World Is About To End!

Less sensationally, the city of Damascus was conquered in 732 BC by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria, an event which marked the end of the Syro-Ephraimite War. The Northern Jewish Kingdom, variously called Israel and Ephraim, was on the losing side of this war, and the outcome was the destruction of that Kingdom and its complete absorption into the Assyrian Empire. Isaiah was from the Southern Kingdom (Judah), which took the opposite side in the war, and he regarded this as a good outcome (though, frankly, the long-term consequences for Judah were not great either) . It’s generally reckoned - outside dispensationalist circles - that Isaiah’s oracle against Damascus refers to the conquest of the city on that occasion.

PDN

No.