Isaiah 17: 1: The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
The future of Damascus as the capital city of Syria is a very bleak one, for both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied of a time when the city will be destroyed and cease to exist. Damascus is actually one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and has been attacked, besieged and conquered throughout the ages, but was never completely destroyed and left uninhabited. The timing of this very specific prophecy is thus for the end times in the final Arab-Israel war when God will use the Israel Defence Force to execute judgment upon Israel’s neighbors and completely wipe out the city of Damascus.
There are many scriptures in the Old Testament that address the last major war in the Middle East between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israel will triumph in the war and expand its borders, achieving security on all its fronts for the first time since its birth in 1948. The scriptures pertaining to the destruction of Damascus will be fulfilled during this major war, in which Israel will very likely launch a limited nuclear strike on the city, obliterating it, in response to Syria’s attack upon northern Israel at that time. Syria will be crushed by the Israeli response, and its capital city that has represented every known terrorist organization in the Middle East will be erased from the map.
Isaiah 19: 16 – 17 and Jeremiah 49: 23 – 27 also tell of how Egypt and other members of the Arab coalition will react to the news of Damascus’ destruction. Isaiah describes it best, likening the Egyptian soldiers to a delicate, unarmed female feebly fighting a skilled male warrior who is wielding a mighty sword. So Israel’s enemies will become weakened and afraid when they hear of and behold the destruction that the mighty Israel Defence Force has meted out upon them.