Old/New Testament
Chapter 4
The Second Word
1 Listen to this warning, you cows of Bashan,
you women who dwell on the mount of Samaria,
you who oppress the weak and crush the needy,
who command your husbands, “Bring us something to drink!”
2 The Lord God has sworn by his holiness:
The time is surely coming upon you
when you will be dragged away with hooks,
and the last of you with fishhooks.
3 Through breaches in the wall you will leave
each one straight ahead,
and you shall be flung out atop a dungheap,
says the Lord.
Run to Your Sanctuary
4 Come to Bethel and sin!
Come to Gilgal and sin even more!
Bring your sacrifices every morning,
your tithes every third day.
5 Burn your thank offering of leavened bread,
and brag publicly about your free-will offerings.
For this is what you love to do,
O children of Israel, says the Lord God.
You Have Not Come to Me
6 Although I made your teeth
clean of food in all your cities
and spread famine in all your villages,
you still would not return to me, says the Lord.
7 I even withheld the rain from you
when there were still three months before the harvest.
I would allow rain to fall upon one town
but not upon another.
One field would be watered by rain,
while another would receive none and dry up.
8 People from two or three towns
would stagger to a neighboring town to drink water,
yet their thirst remained unquenched.
Yet even then you would not return to me,
says the Lord.
9 I struck you with mildew and blight,
I laid waste your gardens and vineyards;
the locust devoured your fig trees and your olive trees,
but still you would not return to me,
says the Lord.
10 I sent among you a plague like that of Egypt,
and I slaughtered your young men with the sword.
I allowed your horses to be captured;
I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camps.
And still you would not return to me,
says the Lord.
11 I brought destruction among you
like that which devastated Sodom and Gomorrah.
You were like a brand snatched from the fire,
and still you would not come back to me,
says the Lord.
12 Therefore, O Israel,
this is what I plan to do with you.
And because I intend to do this,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel.
Homage to the Lord
13 He is the one who formed the mountains
and created the wind,
and who reveals to men his thoughts,
who changes the dawn into darkness
and strides upon the heights of the earth:
the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name.
Chapter 5
Funereal Chant
1 Listen to these words that I utter against you in lamentation, O house of Israel:
2 She has fallen, to rise no more,
the virgin Israel.
She lies forsaken on her own soil,
with no one to raise her up.
3 For thus says the Lord God:
The city that marched out to war with a thousand
will be left with a hundred;
and the one that marched out with a hundred
will have only ten left.
4 For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel:
If you seek me, you will survive,
5 but do not go to Bethel.
Do not journey to Gilgal,
and do not cross over to Beer-sheba.
For Gilgal will surely be led into exile,
and Bethel shall come to nothing.
6 Seek the Lord and you will live,
or else, like a fire,
he will sweep through the house of Joseph,
with no one able to quench the flames.
Hymn to God the Creator
8 He who made the Pleiades and Orion,
who turns heavy darkness into dawn
and darkens day into night,
who summons the waters of the sea
and pours them out over the surface of the earth,
9 who brings destruction on the strong
and ruin upon the fortress:
the Lord is his name.
7 Woe to those who turn justice to wormwood
and thrust righteousness to the ground.
Because You Crush the Weak
10 They hate the one who preaches justice at the city gate
and abhor the one who speaks the truth.
11 Therefore, because you have trampled upon the poor
and extorted levies on their wheat,
even though you have built houses of hewn stone,
you will never live in them;
although you have planted pleasant vineyards,
you will never drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your crimes
and how monstrous are your sins.
You oppress the innocent, accept bribes,
and push aside the destitute at the gates.
13 Therefore, the prudent man keeps silent in such a situation,
for it is an evil period.
Seek the Good So That You Will Live
14 Seek good and not evil,
so that you may live.
Then the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you
as you claim he is.
15 Hate evil and love good,
and let justice prevail at the city gate.
Then it is possible that the Lord, the God of hosts,
will show mercy to the remnant of Joseph.[a]
16 The Countryside Is Devastated. Therefore, this is what the Lord, the God of hosts, the Almighty, has to say:
In every public square there will be lamentation;
in every street they will cry out, “Alas! Alas!”
They will summon the farmers to wail,
and the professional mourners to lament.
17 There will be wailing in every vineyard,
for I will pass through your midst,
says the Lord.
18 Woe to those who long for the day of the Lord.
What will this day of the Lord mean to you?
It will mean darkness, not light,
19 as if someone fled from a lion
and was met by a bear,
or entered his house
and rested his hand against the wall
and was bitten by a snake.
20 Will not the day of the Lord
be darkness, not light,
day of gloom without any brightness?
I Despise Your Feasts
21 I loathe, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you bring me
your burnt offerings and your grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Nor will I look favorably
upon your stall-fed peace offerings.
23 Spare me the noise of your chanting;
I will not listen to the melodies of your harps.
24 Rather, let justice flow like a river,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
25 Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
during those forty years in the desert,
O house of Israel?
26 You have lifted up Sakuth, your king,
and Kaiwan, your star god,
the images that you have made for yourselves.
27 Therefore, I will drive you into exile beyond Damascus,
says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.
Chapter 6
Bloody Description of the Orgy of the Head of Israel
1 Alas for those who are at ease in Zion,
and for those who feel secure on the mount of Samaria,
the leaders of the most important of the nations
to whom the people of Israel have recourse.
2 Cross over to Calneh[b] and see;
travel on from there to Hamath the great,
and then go down to Gath of the Philistines.
Are you better than these kingdoms?
Is your territory greater than theirs?
3 You put aside all thoughts of the evil day
and thereby hasten the reign of violence.
4 Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory
and lounge on their couches.
They feast on lambs from the flock
and stall-fattened calves.
5 They improvise on the music of the harp,
and, like David, they invent musical instruments.
6 They drink wine by the bowlful
and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
but they feel no grief over the ruin of Joseph.
7 Therefore, they will now be the first to go into exile,
and their wanton revelry will come to an end.
There Will Be Nothing Left of Israel
8 The Lord God has sworn by himself.
Thus say I, the Lord, the God of hosts:
I abhor the pride of Jacob
and hate his palaces,
I shall deliver up the city
and all that is in it.
9 If ten men are left in a single house,
they will die.
10 Only a few will be left
to carry out the dead from the house.
If someone calls to a man inside the house,
“Are there any more there?”
and he answers, “No,”
then he will say, “Hush,”
for the name of the Lord must not be mentioned.
11 At the Lord’s command,
the great house will be shattered to bits,
and the small houses will be reduced to rubble.
12 Can horses gallop over rocks?
Can one plow the sea with oxen?
Yet you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of justice into venom—
13 you who rejoice in Lodebar,[c]
who say, “Have we not, by our own strength,
seized Karnaim for ourselves?”
14 Beware, O house of Israel,
for I am raising up against you a nation,
says the Lord, the God of hosts,
and that nation shall oppress you
from Lebo of Hamath even to the Wadi Arabah.
Chapter 7
An Immense Crowd before God’s Throne.[a] 1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on land or on the sea or on any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel rising from the east, bearing the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given the power to ravage the land and the sea, 3 “Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we have set the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”
4 Then I heard how many had been marked with the seal—one hundred and forty-four thousand from all the tribes of Israel:
5 From the tribe of Judah,[b] twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Gad, twelve thousand,
6 from the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Naphtali, twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand,
7 from the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand,
8 from the tribe of Zebulun, twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand.
9 After this, in my vision, I witnessed a vast throng that no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and language. They were standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
11 All the angels who were standing around the throne, and around the elders and the four living creatures, prostrated themselves before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:
“Amen. Praise and glory,
wisdom and thanksgiving,
honor and power and might,
be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
13 Then one of the elders spoke to me and inquired, “Who are these people, all dressed in white robes, and where have they come from?” 14 I replied, “My lord, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are the ones who have survived the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
15 “That is why they stand before the throne of God
and worship him day and night in his temple,
and the one who sits on the throne will shelter them.
16 They will never again experience hunger or thirst,
nor will the sun or any scorching heat cause them discomfort.
17 For the Lamb who is at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd.
He will guide them to springs of living water,[c]
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
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