אֵת

Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces; Judah has multiplied its fortified cities. But I will send fire upon their cities, and it will consume their citadels.

Even if they raise their children, I will bereave them of each one. Yes, woe be to them when I turn away from them!

Surely now they will say, “We have no king, for we do not revere the LORD. What can a king do for us?”

Yes, it will be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim will be seized with shame; Israel will be ashamed of its wooden idols.

Sow for yourselves righteousness and reap the fruit of loving devotion; break up your unplowed ground. For it is time to seek the LORD until He comes and sends righteousness upon you like rain.

In the womb he grasped his brother’s heel, and in his vigor he wrestled with God.

But by a prophet the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved.

And the LORD answered His people: “Behold, I will send you grain, new wine, and oil, and by them you will be satisfied. I will never again make you a reproach among the nations.

The northern army I will drive away from you, banishing it to a barren and desolate land, its front ranks into the Eastern Sea, and its rear guard into the Western Sea. And its stench will rise; its foul odor will ascend. For He has done great things.

Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God, for He has given you the autumn rains for your vindication. He sends you showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before.

I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts—the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust—My great army that I sent against you.

You will have plenty to eat, until you are satisfied. You will praise the name of the LORD your God, who has worked wonders for you. My people will never again be put to shame.

And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

Even on My menservants and maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days.

“Yes, in those days and at that time, when I restore Judah and Jerusalem from captivity,

I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will enter into judgment against them concerning My people, My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations as they divided up My land.

Behold, I will rouse them from the places to which you sold them; I will return your recompense upon your heads.

I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans—to a distant nation.” Indeed, the LORD has spoken.

Let the nations be roused and advance to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit down to judge all the nations on every side.

And in that day the mountains will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will flow with milk. All the streams of Judah will run with water, and a spring will flow from the house of the LORD to water the Valley of Acacias.

This is what the LORD says: “For three transgressions of Damascus, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they threshed Gilead with sledges of iron.

This is what the LORD says: “For three transgressions of the Ammonites, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to enlarge their territory.

This is what the LORD says: “For three transgressions of Judah, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they reject the Law of the LORD and fail to keep His statutes; they are led astray by the lies in which their fathers walked.

They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the earth; they push the needy out of their way. A man and his father have relations with the same girl and so profane My holy name.

Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, though his height was like that of the cedars, and he was as strong as the oaks. Yet I destroyed his fruit above and his roots below.

And I brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, that you might take possession of the land of the Amorite.

“But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.

Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:

“Only you have I known from all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

The Lord GOD has sworn by His holiness: “Behold, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

“I also withheld the rain from you when the harvest was three months away. I sent rain on one city but withheld it from another. One field received rain; another without rain withered.

“I struck you with blight and mildew in your growing gardens and vineyards; the locust devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.

“Some of you I overthrew as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.

Hear this word, O house of Israel, this lamentation I take up against you:

Seek the LORD and live, or He will sweep like fire through the house of Joseph; it will devour everything, with no one at Bethel to extinguish it.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact from him a tax of grain, you will never live in the stone houses you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.

Woe to you who long for the Day of the LORD! What will the Day of the LORD be for you? It will be darkness and not light.

You have taken along Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your star god, the idols you made for yourselves.

Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose name is the God of Hosts.

The Lord GOD has sworn by Himself—the LORD, the God of Hosts, has declared: “I abhor Jacob’s pride and detest his citadels, so I will deliver up the city and everything in it.”

For behold, I will raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel,” declares the LORD, the God of Hosts, “and they will oppress you from Lebo-hamath to the Brook of the Arabah.”