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!”

With what should I enter the Lord’s presence? With what should I bow before the sovereign God? Should I enter his presence with burnt offerings, with year-old calves?

Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed up like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins, and the Temple Mount will become a hill overgrown with brush!

You build Zion through bloody crimes, Jerusalem through unjust violence.

But you are the ones who will be forced to leave! For this land is not secure! Sin will thoroughly destroy it!

In the future the Lord’s Temple Mount will be the most important mountain of all; it will be more prominent than other hills. People will stream to it.

When my enemies see this, they will be covered with shame. They say to me, “Where is the Lord your God?” I will gloat over them. Then they will be trampled down like mud in the streets.

Residents of Mareshah, a conqueror will attack you, the leaders of Israel shall flee to Adullam.

“In that day,” says the Lord, “I will destroy your horses from your midst, and smash your chariots.

I will uproot your images of Asherah from your midst, and destroy your idols.

It will be a day for rebuilding your walls; in that day your boundary will be extended.

The earth will become desolate because of what its inhabitants have done.

In that day people will sing this taunt song to you – they will mock you with this lament: ‘We are completely destroyed; they sell off the property of my people. How they remove it from me! They assign our fields to the conqueror.’

Therefore you will have to say farewell to Moresheth Gath. The residents of Achzib will be as disappointing as a dried up well to the kings of Israel.

‘Don’t preach with such impassioned rhetoric,’ they say excitedly. ‘These prophets should not preach of such things; we will not be overtaken by humiliation.’

But I am full of the courage that the Lord’s Spirit gives, and have a strong commitment to justice. This enables me to confront Jacob with its rebellion, and Israel with its sin.

“In that day,” says the Lord, “I will gather the lame, and assemble the outcasts whom I injured.

Jerusalem, why are you now shouting so loudly? Has your king disappeared? Has your wise leader been destroyed? Is this why pain grips you as if you were a woman in labor?

But they do not know what the Lord is planning; they do not understand his strategy. He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed at the threshing floor.

He will give us peace. Should the Assyrians try to invade our land and attempt to set foot in our fortresses, we will send against them seven shepherd-rulers, make that eight commanders.