“Damascus” refers to a nation, the way we now refer to “Washington” to denote the United States. Hence, her CITIES will be abandoned. What sense does it make to say that a city’s cities will be adandoned, unless we recognize that city to be in a hierarchy over other cities?
“Her cities shall be forever abandoned,” then do not mean that they shall always be abandoned by all of mankind, but just that they shall always be adandoned by her. Maybe not even that they shall always be depopulated by her, but even simply deprived of her.
In fact, the “remnants of Aram (the Aramites)” have had “the same glory of the Israelites.” What “glory” does Isaiah refer to? The utter destruction of them as a people, for just as Israel was destroyed before Isaiah, by the Aramite Assyrians, the Aramites would be destoyed by the Babylonians. So partly, the use of the term “glory” is meant with irony, since Israel had long ago fallen. OTOH, today the Aramites are a most persistently Christian people, and their persistent can easily be compared to the modern Jews.
But these near-term events will be in opposition to Israel, so they cannot be end-of-days: “On that day, the glory of Jacob will fade, ... In that day, man will look to his maker, his eyes turned towards the Holy One of Israel.”
See? These are JEWS in Damascus Isaiah is preaching to! They abandoned their faith under foreign domination, and Isaiah is foretelling that their conquerers will be conquered again, by an even worse rulers. WHat he was referring to was the iminent invasion of Assyria by Babylon, which resulted in the Jews in Damascus ceasing to exist.
From then on, Assyria would never again exist, nor would Damascus be peopled by Aramites, nor by Jews. Aramites, also known as Assyrians or Syriacs, are not related to the Arabs who dominate Syria, nor is Syria the same as Assyria. (There is even debate whether or not they are etymologically related.)
Though the “remnant” Aramites survive to this day, in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, the Caucasus, Jordan, and Lebanon, Syria is Arab, not Aramite.
I guess you've never been to Los Angeles.
"The utter destruction of them as a people, for just as Israel was destroyed before Isaiah, by the Aramite Assyrians, the Aramites would be destroyed by the Babylonians."
You are confusing Assur and Aram. Assyria was made up of them both. "Assyrians" were invaders from the northern land of Assur (thought to be on the eastern coast of the Black Sea), and were an elite class over the (more-or-less native) Aramites, who had naturally drifted south and east from their origins (probably Turkey).
AFAIR, when Babylon conquered Assyria, it didn't exactly conquer Assur, but merely drove them far to the north, back to their ancestral lands, but did receive dominion over the land of Syria and the Aramites.
So one could also suggest that the prophecy against Damascus was against the people of Assur rather than the people of Aram, who have continued much as you have described through a long series of dominant empires. It hardly seems fair to punish the underclass for what their overlords had done.
The most straightforward reading of the prophecy would be in the most literal sense. It also seems to take place at a time when Ephraim returns to occupy his native soil, and i so populous that he spills out into all the regions South of Damascus, as reported in Isaiah and Zechariah (among others).
I believe that time to be the aftermath of the War of Gog and Magog, yet prior to the time of the end.