17:1–9 We move north from Moab to Aram (v. 3) or Syria, though the poem speaks of Aram’s capital city Damascus. The mention of the city corresponds to a feature that runs through this poem and forms a contrast with the poem on Moab. There cities featured, but they were chiefly ciphers for their inhabitants. “Heshbon cries out” meant “the people of Heshbon cry out” and the problem was the withering of their fields (15:4; 16:8). The disaster that had come on Moab was an agricultural disaster; the invader had destroyed the crops, not the buildings. Chapter 17 describes an urban disaster. The Aramean capital stands in ruins. So do the cities of Aroer (v. 2), the southernmost point in the territory into which the Aramean empire had extended but which Israel also claimed (2 Kgs. 10:32–33).

Again …