“In that day,” says the Lord, “I will destroy ¹  your horses from your midst, and smash your chariots.

I will remove the sorcery ¹  that you practice, ²  and you will no longer have omen readers living among you. ³ 

I will angrily seek vengeance on the nations that do not obey me.” ¹ 

In that day people will sing this taunt song to you – they will mock you with this lament: ¹  ‘We are completely destroyed; they sell off ²  the property of my people. How they remove it from me! ³  They assign our fields to the conqueror.’ ⁴ 

But I ¹  am full of the courage that the Lord’s Spirit gives, and have a strong commitment to justice. ²  This enables me to confront Jacob with its rebellion, and Israel with its sin. ³ 

“In that day,” says the Lord, “I will gather the lame, and assemble the outcasts whom I injured. ¹ 

If a lying windbag should come and say, ¹  ‘I’ll promise you blessings of wine and beer,’ ²  he would be just the right preacher for these people! ³ 

Those survivors from ¹  Jacob will live ²  in the midst of many nations. ³  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. ⁴ 

Faithful men have disappeared ¹  from the land; there are no godly men left. ²  They all wait in ambush so they can shed blood; ³  they hunt their own brother with a net. ⁴ 

Those survivors from Jacob will live among the nations, in the midst of many peoples. They will be like a lion among the animals of the forest, like a young lion among the flocks of sheep, which attacks when it passes through; it rips its prey ¹  and there is no one to stop it. ²