SQL is a pretty high-level, declarative language. It's unnecessarily wordy though, and not very composable.

The problem with ORMs is that they usually give you a wrong abstraction. They map poorly on how a relational database works, and what it is capable of. But the cost of it is usually poor performance, rarely it's obvious bugs. So it's really easy to get started to use; when it starts costing you, you can optimize the few most critical paths, and just pay more and more for the DB. This looks like an okay deal for the industry, it seems.