He replied, “Don’t you know what these are?” And I said, “No, sir.”

“‘It then came about that just as I ¹  cried out, but they would not obey, so they will cry out, but I will not listen,’ the Lord Lord who rules over all had said.

Indeed, I am about to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not take heed to the sheep headed to slaughter, will not seek the scattered, and will not heal the injured. ¹  Moreover, he will not nourish the one that is healthy but instead will eat the meat of the fat sheep ²  and tear off their hooves.

If the Egyptians will not do so, they will get no rain – instead there will be the kind of plague which the Lord inflicts on any nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

He replied, “Don’t you know what these are?” So I responded, “No, sir.”

Those who buy them ¹  slaughter them and are not held guilty; those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich.’ Their own shepherds have no compassion for them.

It will happen in one day (a day known to the Lord); not in the day or the night, but in the evening there will be light. ¹ 

But if any of the nations anywhere on earth refuse to go up to Jerusalem ¹  to worship the King, the Lord who rules over all, they will get no rain.

On that day there will be no light – the sources of light in the heavens will congeal. ¹ 

And now when you eat and drink, are you not doing so for yourselves?’”

But I will be different now to this remnant of my people from the way I was in those days,’ says the Lord who rules over all,

Instead he will say, ‘I am no prophet – indeed, I am a farmer, for a man has made me his indentured servant since my youth.’ ¹ 

And people will settle there, and there will no longer be the threat of divine extermination – Jerusalem will dwell in security.

“Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the former prophets called out, saying, ‘The Lord who rules over all says, “Turn now from your evil wickedness,”’ but they would by no means obey me,” says the Lord.

Therefore he told me, “These signify the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by strength and not by power, but by my Spirit,’ ¹  says the Lord who rules over all.”

Indeed, I will no longer have compassion on the people of the land,” says the Lord, “but instead I will turn every last person over to his neighbor and his king. They will devastate the land, and I will not deliver it from them.”

The Lord ¹  said to Satan, “May the Lord rebuke you, Satan! May the Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, ²  rebuke you! Isn’t this man like a burning stick snatched from the fire?”

Should you not have obeyed the words that the Lord cried out through the former prophets when Jerusalem ¹  was peacefully inhabited and her surrounding cities, the Negev, and the Shephelah ²  were also populated?

‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ¹  land a waste.”

“For the Lord who rules over all says, ‘As I had planned to hurt ¹  you when your fathers made me angry,’ says the Lord who rules over all, ‘and I was not sorry,