For the Lord has poured out on you a strong urge to sleep deeply. He has shut your eyes (the prophets), and covered your heads (the seers).

Tremble, you complacent ones! Shake with fear, you carefree ones! Strip off your clothes and expose yourselves – put sackcloth on your waist!

This desolation will continue until new life is poured out on us from heaven. Then the desert will become an orchard and the orchard will be considered a forest.

I am not angry. I wish I could confront some thorns and briers! Then I would march against them for battle; I would set them all on fire,

“I thought, ‘I will no longer see the Lord in the land of the living, I will no longer look on humankind with the inhabitants of the world.

Ariel is as good as dead – Ariel, the town David besieged! Keep observing your annual rituals, celebrate your festivals on schedule.

The grass dries up, the flowers wither, when the wind sent by the Lord blows on them. Surely humanity is like grass.

All of us had wandered off like sheep; each of us had strayed off on his own path, but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him.

They will swoop down on the Philistine hills to the west; together they will loot the people of the east. They will take over Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be their subjects.

The Lord who commands armies will hold a banquet for all the nations on this mountain. At this banquet there will be plenty of meat and aged wine – tender meat and choicest wine.

So he poured out his fierce anger on them, along with the devastation of war. Its flames encircled them, but they did not realize it; it burned against them, but they did notice.

Foreigners will rebuild your walls; their kings will serve you. Even though I struck you down in my anger, I will restore my favor and have compassion on you.

Look all around you! All of them gather to you. As surely as I live,” says the Lord, “you will certainly wear all of them like jewelry; you will put them on as if you were a bride.

They will no longer trust in the altars their hands made, or depend on the Asherah poles and incense altars their fingers made.

For, look, darkness covers the earth and deep darkness covers the nations, but the Lord shines on you; his splendor appears over you.

Those who go down to Egypt for help are as good as dead, those who rely on war horses, and trust in Egypt’s many chariots and in their many, many horsemen. But they do not rely on the Holy One of Israel and do not seek help from the Lord.

What will you do on judgment day, when destruction arrives from a distant place? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your wealth?

For look, the Lord is coming out of the place where he lives, to punish the sin of those who live on the earth. The earth will display the blood shed on it; it will no longer cover up its slain.

I will break Assyria in my land, I will trample them underfoot on my hills. Their yoke will be removed from my people, the burden will be lifted from their shoulders.

For this reason this is what the Holy One of Israel says: “You have rejected this message; you trust instead in your ability to oppress and trick, and rely on that kind of behavior.