“You say,
‘Don’t prophesy against Israel.
    Stop preaching against my people.^[d]’
¹⁷ But this is what the Lord says:
‘Your wife will become a prostitute in this city,
    and your sons and daughters will be killed.
Your land will be divided up,
    and you yourself will die in a foreign land.
And the people of Israel will certainly become captives in exile,
    far from their homeland.’”

⁴ Listen to this, you who rob the poor
    and trample down the needy!
⁵ You can’t wait for the Sabbath day to be over
    and the religious festivals to end
    so you can get back to cheating the helpless.
You measure out grain with dishonest measures
    and cheat the buyer with dishonest scales.^[e]
6 And you mix the grain you sell
    with chaff swept from the floor.
Then you enslave poor people
    for one piece of silver or a pair of sandals.

⁷ Now the Lord has sworn this oath
    by his own name, the Pride of Israel^[f]:
“I will never forget
    the wicked things you have done!
⁸ The earth will tremble for your deeds,
    and everyone will mourn.
The ground will rise like the Nile River at floodtime;
    it will heave up, then sink again.

⁹ “In that day,” says the Sovereign Lord,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth while it is still day.
¹⁰ I will turn your celebrations into times of mourning
    and your singing into weeping.
You will wear funeral clothes
    and shave your heads to show your sorrow—
as if your only son had died.
    How very bitter that day will be!

¹¹ “The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord,
    “when I will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread or water
    but of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹² People will stagger from sea to sea
    and wander from border to border^[g]
searching for the word of the Lord,
    but they will not find it.
¹³ Beautiful girls and strong young men
    will grow faint in that day,
    thirsting for the Lord’s word.
¹⁴ And those who swear by the shameful idols of Samaria—
    who take oaths in the name of the god of Dan
    and make vows in the name of the god of Beersheba^[h]—
they will all fall down,
    never to rise again.”

“Strike the tops of the Temple columns,
    so that the foundation will shake.
Bring down the roof
    on the heads of the people below.
I will kill with the sword those who survive.
    No one will escape!

² “Even if they dig down to the place of the dead,^[i]
    I will reach down and pull them up.
Even if they climb up into the heavens,
    I will bring them down.
³ Even if they hide at the very top of Mount Carmel,
    I will search them out and capture them.
Even if they hide at the bottom of the ocean,
    I will send the sea serpent after them to bite them.
⁴ Even if their enemies drive them into exile,
    I will command the sword to kill them there.
I am determined to bring disaster upon them
    and not to help them.”

⁵ The Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies,
    touches the land and it melts,
    and all its people mourn.
The ground rises like the Nile River at floodtime,
    and then it sinks again.
⁶ The Lord’s home reaches up to the heavens,
    while its foundation is on the earth.
He draws up water from the oceans
    and pours it down as rain on the land.
    The Lord is his name!

⁷ “Are you Israelites more important to me
    than the Ethiopians?^[j]” asks the Lord.
“I brought Israel out of Egypt,
    but I also brought the Philistines from Crete^[k]
    and led the Arameans out of Kir.

⁸ “I, the Sovereign Lord,
    am watching this sinful nation of Israel.
I will destroy it
    from the face of the earth.
But I will never completely destroy the family of Israel,^[l]”
    says the Lord.
⁹ “For I will give the command
    and will shake Israel along with the other nations
as grain is shaken in a sieve,
    yet not one true kernel will be lost.
¹⁰ But all the sinners will die by the sword—
    all those who say, ‘Nothing bad will happen to us.’

¹³ “The time will come,” says the Lord,
“when the grain and grapes will grow faster
    than they can be harvested.
Then the terraced vineyards on the hills of Israel
    will drip with sweet wine!
¹⁴ I will bring my exiled people of Israel
    back from distant lands,
and they will rebuild their ruined cities
    and live in them again.
They will plant vineyards and gardens;
    they will eat their crops and drink their wine.
¹⁵ I will firmly plant them there
    in their own land.
They will never again be uprooted
    from the land I have given them,”
    says the Lord your God.

O Lord my God, how great you are!
    You are robed with honor and majesty.
²     You are dressed in a robe of light.
You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens;
³     you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds.
You make the clouds your chariot;
    you ride upon the wings of the wind.
⁴ The winds are your messengers;
    flames of fire are your servants.^[a]

⁵ You placed the world on its foundation
    so it would never be moved.
⁶ You clothed the earth with floods of water,
    water that covered even the mountains.
⁷ At your command, the water fled;
    at the sound of your thunder, it hurried away.
⁸ Mountains rose and valleys sank
    to the levels you decreed.
⁹ Then you set a firm boundary for the seas,
    so they would never again cover the earth.

¹⁰ You make springs pour water into the ravines,
    so streams gush down from the mountains.
¹¹ They provide water for all the animals,
    and the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
¹² The birds nest beside the streams
    and sing among the branches of the trees.
¹³ You send rain on the mountains from your heavenly home,
    and you fill the earth with the fruit of your labor.
¹⁴ You cause grass to grow for the livestock
    and plants for people to use.
You allow them to produce food from the earth—
¹⁵     wine to make them glad,
olive oil to soothe their skin,
    and bread to give them strength.
¹⁶ The trees of the Lord are well cared for—
    the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
¹⁷ There the birds make their nests,
    and the storks make their homes in the cypresses.
¹⁸ High in the mountains live the wild goats,
    and the rocks form a refuge for the hyraxes.^[b]

¹⁹ You made the moon to mark the seasons,
    and the sun knows when to set.
²⁰ You send the darkness, and it becomes night,
    when all the forest animals prowl about.
²¹ Then the young lions roar for their prey,
    stalking the food provided by God.
²² At dawn they slink back
    into their dens to rest.
²³ Then people go off to their work,
    where they labor until evening.

²⁴ O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
    In wisdom you have made them all.
    The earth is full of your creatures.
²⁵ Here is the ocean, vast and wide,
    teeming with life of every kind,
    both large and small.
²⁶ See the ships sailing along,
    and Leviathan,^[c] which you made to play in the sea.

²⁷ They all depend on you
    to give them food as they need it.
²⁸ When you supply it, they gather it.
    You open your hand to feed them,
    and they are richly satisfied.
²⁹ But if you turn away from them, they panic.
    When you take away their breath,
    they die and turn again to dust.
³⁰ When you give them your breath,^[d] life is created,
    and you renew the face of the earth.

³¹ May the glory of the Lord continue forever!
    The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made!
³² The earth trembles at his glance;
    the mountains smoke at his touch.

³³ I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
    I will praise my God to my last breath!
³⁴ May all my thoughts be pleasing to him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord.
³⁵ Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth;
    let the wicked disappear forever.

Let all that I am praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord!