How tragic that the once-faithful city has become a prostitute! ¹  She was once a center of ²  justice, fairness resided in her, but now only murderers. ³ 

Indeed this is what the Lord told me. He took hold of me firmly and warned me not to act like these people: ¹ 

Then the guard ¹  cries out: “On the watchtower, O sovereign master, ²  I stand all day long; at my post I am stationed every night.

The sovereign master ¹  will give you distress to eat and suffering to drink; ²  but your teachers will no longer be hidden; your eyes will see them. ³ 

Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told to you since the very beginning? Have you not understood from the time the earth’s foundations were made?

I look, but there is no one, among them there is no one who serves as an adviser, that I might ask questions and receive answers.

“I announced events beforehand, ¹  I issued the decrees and made the predictions; ²  suddenly I acted and they came to pass.

Yet the children born during your time of bereavement will say within your hearing, ‘This place is too cramped for us, ¹  make room for us so we can live here.’ ² 

Because of the long distance you must travel, you get tired, ¹  but you do not say, ‘I give up.’ ²  You get renewed energy, ³  so you don’t collapse. ⁴ 

He sees there is no advocate; ¹  he is shocked ²  that no one intervenes. So he takes matters into his own hands; ³  his desire for justice drives him on. ⁴ 

You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool – but you did not trust in ¹  the one who made it; ²  you did not depend on ³  the one who formed it long ago!

‘What right do you have to be here? What relatives do you have buried here? ¹  Why ²  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.

Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace supervisor, accompanied by Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the secretary, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn in grief ¹  and reported to him what the chief adviser had said.

“Please, Lord. Remember how I have served you ¹  faithfully and with wholehearted devotion, ²  and how I have carried out your will.” ³  Then Hezekiah wept bitterly. ⁴ 

I decreed and delivered and proclaimed, and there was no other god among you. You are my witnesses,” says the Lord, “that I am God.

This is what the Lord, your protector, ¹  says, the one who formed you in the womb: “I am the Lord, who made everything, who alone stretched out the sky, who fashioned the earth all by myself, ² 

I will give you hidden treasures, ¹  riches stashed away in secret places, so you may recognize that I am the Lord, the one who calls you by name, the God of Israel.

I announced them to you beforehand; before they happened, I predicted them for you, so you could never say, ‘My image did these things, my idol, my cast image, decreed them.’

He was led away after an unjust trial ¹  – but who even cared? ²  Indeed, he was cut off from the land of the living; ³  because of the rebellion of his own ⁴  people he was wounded.

He built a hedge around it, ¹  removed its stones, and planted a vine. He built a tower in the middle of it, and constructed a winepress. He waited for it to produce edible grapes, but it produced sour ones instead. ²