I will break the bar of Damascus, And cut off the inhabitant from the valley of Aven, And him who holds the scepter from the house of Eden; And the people of Syria shall go into captivity to Kir," says Yahweh.
At Heliopolis too, men “shamelessly gave their wives and daughters to shame.” The outburst of paganism there in the reign of Julian the Apostate shows how deeply rooted was its idolatry. Probably then, Amos pronounces the sentence of the people of that whole beautiful vale, as “valley of vanity” or “iniquity” , being wholly given to that worst idolatry which degraded Syria. Here, as the seat of idolatry, the chief judgments of God were to fall. Its inhabitants were to be cut off, that is, utterly destroyed; on the rest, captivity is the only sentence pronounced. The Assyrian monarchs not unfrequently put to death those who despised their religion , and so may herein have executed blindly the sentence of God.