“Damascus has been a total wreck before, and it will be in the future...”
No, the Bible says Damascus will never be inhabited again when this happens. I had thought through the years, it would be nuclear that would prevent living there forever, but maybe chemicals could do the same thing.
bump!
As it turned out in or about the year 600 AD the Euphrates shifted course leaving Babylon high and dry. It's still a wreck. Saddam Hussein was rebuilding parts of the old walled center city as a living museum ~ he got cut down in midstream as you noticed. This is a done deal.
Jeremiah later down the text says the daughter of Babylon will have her time cut short. That turns out to have happened to Baghdad which was built on the Tigris as a replacement for Babylon. They were impolite to some Mongol ambassadors ~ sent their bodies back to Huelaga Khan I believe ~ in barrels!
He then slaughtered all the inhabitants and burned it to the ground. The local economy was pretty much shattered for the next half millennium.
The predictions regarding Damascus are of a different order ~ the city goes up, the city goes down, but it goes up, and it goes down and it goes up again ~ over and over.
Babylon was destroyed and it's still destroyed, and nobody is going back there.