Kings reign by means of me, and potentates decree righteousness;

My heart went out to Israel’s leaders, to the people who answered the call to war. Praise the Lord!

Those who enact unjust policies are as good as dead, those who are always instituting unfair regulations,

Look, I have inscribed your name on my palms; your walls are constantly before me.

The well which the princes dug, which the leaders of the people opened with their scepters and their staffs.” And from the wilderness they traveled to Mattanah;

“O that my words were written down, O that they were written on a scroll,

Gilead belongs to me, as does Manasseh! Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my royal scepter.

Gilead belongs to me, as does Manasseh! Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my royal scepter.

When he established the heavens, I was there; when he marked out the horizon over the face of the deep,

when he gave the sea his decree that the waters should not pass over his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

lest they drink and forget what is decreed, and remove from all the poor their legal rights.

For the Lord, our ruler, the Lord, our commander, the Lord, our king – he will deliver us.

But she increased her prostitution. She saw men carved on the wall, images of the Chaldeans carved in bright red,

The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; the nations will obey him.

He has selected the best part for himself, for the portion of the ruler is set aside there; he came with the leaders of the people, he obeyed the righteous laws of the Lord and his ordinances with Israel.

They came from Ephraim, who uprooted Amalek, they follow after you, Benjamin, with your soldiers. From Makir leaders came down, from Zebulun came the ones who march carrying an officer’s staff.

‘What right do you have to be here? What relatives do you have buried here? Why do you chisel out a tomb for yourself here? He chisels out his burial site in an elevated place, he carves out his tomb on a cliff.

Now go, write it down on a tablet in their presence, inscribe it on a scroll, so that it might be preserved for a future time as an enduring witness.

“And you, son of man, take a brick and set it in front of you. Inscribe a city on it – Jerusalem.