After some years have passed, they will form an alliance. Then the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to make an agreement, but she will not retain her power, nor will he continue in his strength. She, together with the one who brought her, her child, and her benefactor will all be delivered over at that time.

His intention will be to come with the strength of his entire kingdom, and he will form alliances. He will give the king of the south a daughter in marriage in order to destroy the kingdom, but it will not turn out to his advantage.

Then she will pursue her lovers, but she will not catch them; she will seek them, but she will not find them. Then she will say, “I will go back to my husband, because I was better off then than I am now.”

I will not punish your daughters when they commit prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men consort with harlots, they sacrifice with temple prostitutes. It is true: “A people that lacks understanding will come to ruin!”

When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah saw his wound, then Ephraim turned to Assyria, and begged its great king for help. But he will not be able to heal you! He cannot cure your wound!

It will be a day of dreadful darkness, a day of foreboding storm clouds, like blackness spread over the mountains. It is a huge and powerful army – there has never been anything like it ever before, and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come!

This is what the Lord says: “Because Tyre has committed three crimes – make that four! – I will not revoke my decree of judgment. They sold a whole community to Edom; they failed to observe a treaty of brotherhood.

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.

“I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. I gave rain to one city, but not to another. One field would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.

Do not seek Bethel! Do not visit Gilgal! Do not journey down to Beer Sheba! For the people of Gilgal will certainly be carried into exile; and Bethel will become a place where disaster abounds.”

Therefore, because you make the poor pay taxes on their crops and exact a grain tax from them, you will not live in the houses you built with chiseled stone, nor will you drink the wine from the fine vineyards you planted.

Be certain of this, the time is coming,” says the sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land – not a shortage of food or water but an end to divine revelation!

I saw the sovereign One standing by the altar and he said, “Strike the tops of the support pillars, so the thresholds shake! Knock them down on the heads of all the people, and I will kill the survivors with the sword. No one will be able to run away; no one will be able to escape.

“You Israelites are just like the Ethiopians in my sight,” says the Lord. “Certainly I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but I also brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.

“If thieves came to rob you during the night, they would steal only as much as they wanted! If grape pickers came to harvest your vineyards, they would leave some behind for the poor! But you will be totally destroyed!

Should I not be even more concerned about Nineveh, this enormous city? There are more than one hundred twenty thousand people in it who do not know right from wrong, as well as many animals!”

Therefore the Lord says this: “Look, I am devising disaster for this nation! It will be like a yoke from which you cannot free your neck. You will no longer walk proudly, for it will be a time of catastrophe.

Her leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, her priests proclaim rulings for profit, and her prophets read omens for pay. Yet they claim to trust the Lord and say, “The Lord is among us. Disaster will not overtake us!”

He will arbitrate between many peoples and settle disputes between many distant nations. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations will not use weapons against other nations, and they will no longer train for war.

Those survivors from Jacob will live in the midst of many nations. They will be like the dew the Lord sends, like the rain on the grass, that does not hope for men to come or wait around for humans to arrive.