So I said, “Oh, my dear people, put on sackcloth and roll in ashes. Mourn with painful sobs as though you had lost your only child. For any moment now that destructive army will come against us.”

There is still medicinal ointment available in Gilead! There is still a physician there! Why then have my dear people not been restored to health?

(8:23) I wish that my head were a well full of water and my eyes were a fountain full of tears! If they were, I could cry day and night for those of my dear people who have been killed.

(9:1) I wish I had a lodging place in the desert where I could spend some time like a weary traveler. Then I would desert my people and walk away from them because they are all unfaithful to God, a congregation of people that has been disloyal to him.

Therefore the Lord who rules over all says, “I will now purify them in the fires of affliction and test them. The wickedness of my dear people has left me no choice. What else can I do?

Yet my people have forgotten me and offered sacrifices to worthless idols! This makes them stumble along in the way they live and leave the old reliable path of their fathers. They have left them to walk in bypaths, in roads that are not smooth and level.

How long will they go on plotting to make my people forget who I am through the dreams they tell one another? That is just as bad as what their ancestors did when they forgot who I am by worshiping the god Baal.

“My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have allow them to go astray. They have wandered around in the mountains. They have roamed from one mountain and hill to another. They have forgotten their resting place.

כ (Kaf) My eyes are worn out from weeping; my stomach is in knots. My heart is poured out on the ground due to the destruction of my helpless people; children and infants faint in the town squares.

ג (Gimel) Even the jackals nurse their young at their breast, but my people are cruel, like ostriches in the desert.

ו (Vav) The punishment of my people exceeded that of of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment with no one to help her.

“‘This is because they have led my people astray saying, “All is well,” when things are not well. When anyone builds a wall without mortar, they coat it with whitewash.

I will tear off your headbands and rescue my people from your power; they will no longer be prey in your hands. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

Therefore you will no longer see false visions and practice divination. I will rescue my people from your power, and you will know that I am the Lord.’”

I will set my face against that person and will make him an object lesson and a byword and will cut him off from among my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

I will exact my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel. They will carry out in Edom my anger and rage; they will experience my vengeance, declares the sovereign Lord.’”

Then they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they are my people, the house of Israel, declares the sovereign Lord.

I will lead people, my people Israel, across you; they will possess you and you will become their inheritance. No longer will you bereave them of their children.

“Therefore, prophesy, son of man, and say to Gog: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: On that day when my people Israel are living securely, you will take notice

of the land. This will be his property in Israel. My princes will no longer oppress my people, but the land will be allotted to the house of Israel according to their tribes.