Listen, all you nations! ¹  Pay attention, all inhabitants of earth! ²  The sovereign Lord will testify ³  against you; the Lord will accuse you ⁴  from his majestic palace. ⁵ 

In the future ¹  the Lord’s Temple Mount will be the most important mountain of all; ²  it will be more prominent than other hills. ³  People will stream to it.

Hear the Lord’s accusation, you mountains, you enduring foundations of the earth! For the Lord has a case against his people; he has a dispute with Israel! ¹ 

There is no other God like you! ¹  You ²  forgive sin and pardon ³  the rebellion of those who remain among your people. ⁴  You do not remain angry forever, ⁵  but delight in showing loyal love.

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 ¹  at the threshing floor.

‘Don’t preach with such impassioned rhetoric,’ they say excitedly. ¹  ‘These prophets should not preach of such things; we will not be overtaken by humiliation.’ ² 

The prophets ¹  will be ashamed; the omen readers will be humiliated. All of them will cover their mouths, ²  for they will receive no divine oracles.” ³ 

Does the family ¹  of Jacob say, ²  ‘The Lord’s patience ³  can’t be exhausted – he would never do such things’? ⁴  To be sure, my commands bring a reward for those who obey them, ⁵ 

Shepherd your people with your shepherd’s rod, ¹  the flock that belongs to you, ²  the one that lives alone in a thicket, in the midst of a pastureland. ³  Allow them to graze in Bashan and Gilead, ⁴  as they did in the old days. ⁵ 

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 

Twist and strain, ¹  Daughter Zion, as if you were in labor! For you will leave the city and live in the open field. You will go to Babylon, but there you will be rescued. There the Lord will deliver ²  you from the power ³  of your enemies.

All her carved idols will be smashed to pieces; all her metal cult statues will be destroyed by fire. ¹  I will make a waste heap ²  of all her images. Since ³  she gathered the metal ⁴  as a prostitute collects her wages, the idols will become a prostitute’s wages again.” ⁵ 

“Get up and thresh, Daughter Zion! For I will give you iron horns; ¹  I will give you bronze hooves, and you will crush many nations.” ²  You will devote to the Lord the spoils you take from them, and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ³  of the whole earth. ⁴ 

Therefore the Lord says this: “Look, I am devising disaster for this nation! ¹  It will be like a yoke from which you cannot free your neck. ²  You will no longer ³  walk proudly, for it will be a time of catastrophe.

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 

I will transform the lame into the nucleus of a new nation, ¹  and those far off ²  into a mighty nation. The Lord will reign over them on Mount Zion, from that day forward and forevermore.” ³ 

This is what the Lord says: “The prophets who mislead my people are as good as dead. ¹  If someone gives them enough to eat, they offer an oracle of peace. ²  But if someone does not give them food, they are ready to declare war on him. ³ 

Each will sit under his own grapevine or under his own fig tree without any fear. ¹  The Lord who commands armies has decreed it. ² 

Though all the nations follow their respective gods, ¹  we will follow ²  the Lord our God forever.

“I will not overlook, ¹  O sinful house, the dishonest gain you have hoarded away, ²  or the smaller-than-standard measure I hate so much. ³