Listen and warn the family of Jacob! The sovereign Lord, the God who commands armies, is speaking!

and I will drive you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord. He is called the God who commands armies!

You will pick up your images of Sikkuth, your king, and Kiyyun, your star god, which you made for yourselves,

“Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel. Because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel!

Seek good and not evil so you can live! Then the Lord, the God who commands armies, just might be with you, as you claim he is.

I will plant them on their land and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God.

They stretch out on clothing seized as collateral; they do so right beside every altar! They drink wine bought with the fines they have levied; they do so right in the temple of their God!

Hate what is wrong, love what is right! Promote justice at the city gate! Maybe the Lord, the God who commands armies, will have mercy on those who are left from Joseph.

The sovereign Lord confirms this oath by his very own life. The Lord, the God who commands armies, is speaking: “I despise Jacob’s arrogance; I hate their fortresses. I will hand over to their enemies the city of Samaria and everything in it.”

“Look! I am about to bring a nation against you, family of Israel.” The Lord, the God who commands armies, is speaking. “They will oppress you all the way from Lebo-Hamath to the Stream of the Arabah.”

“I overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking!

For here he is! He formed the mountains and created the wind. He reveals his plans to men. He turns the dawn into darkness and marches on the heights of the earth. The Lord, the God who commands armies, is his name!”

These are the ones who now take oaths in the name of the sinful idol goddess of Samaria. They vow, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or ‘As surely as your beloved one lives, O Beer Sheba!’ But they will fall down and not get up again.”

Because of Israel’s sins this is what the Lord, the God who commands armies, the sovereign One, says: “In all the squares there will be wailing, in all the streets they will mourn the dead. They will tell the field workers to lament and the professional mourners to wail.

This is what the Lord says: “Because Judah has committed three covenant transgressions – make that four! – I will not revoke my decree of judgment. They rejected the Lord’s law; they did not obey his commands. Their false gods, to which their fathers were loyal, led them astray.

The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw a basket of summer fruit.

The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw the sovereign Lord summoning a shower of fire. It consumed the great deep and devoured the fields.

A lion has roared! Who is not afraid? The sovereign Lord has spoken! Who can refuse to prophesy?

I said, “Sovereign Lord, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is too weak!”

Certainly the sovereign Lord does nothing without first revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.