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²⁸They are waxen fat, they are become sleek;

Yea, they overpass in deeds of wickedness;

They plead not the cause, the cause of the fatherless,

That they might make it to prosper;

And the right of the needy do they not judge.

²⁹Shall I not punish for these things?

Saith the Lord;

Shall not My soul be avenged

On such a nation as this?

 

³⁰An appalling and horrible thing

Is come to pass in the land:

³¹The prophets prophesy in the service of falsehood,

And the priests bear rule at their beck;

And My people love to have it so;

What then will ye do in the end thereof?

 

6Put yourselves under covert, ye children of Benjamin,

Away from the midst of Jerusalem,

And blow the horn in Tekoa,

And set up a signal on Beth-cherem;

For evil looketh forth from the north,

And a great destruction.

²The comely and delicate one,

The daughter of Zion, will I cut off.

³Shepherds with their flocks come unto her;

They pitch their tents against her round about;

They feed bare every one what is nigh at hand.

⁴'Prepare ye war against her;

Arise, and let us go up at noon! '

'Woe unto us! for the day declineth,

For the shadows of the evening are stretched out! '

⁵'Arise, and let us go up by night,

And let us destroy her palaces.'

 

⁶For thus hath the Lord of hosts said:

Hew ye down her trees,

And cast up a mound against Jerusalem;

This is the city to be punished;

Everywhere there is oppression in the midst of her.

⁷As a cistern welleth with her waters,

So she welleth with her wickedness;

Violence and spoil is heard in her;

Before Me continually is sickness and wounds.

⁸Be thou corrected, O Jerusalem,

Lest My soul be alienated from thee,

Lest I make thee desolate,

A land not inhabited.

 

⁹Thus saith the Lord of hosts:

They shall thoroughly glean as a vine

The remnant of Israel;

Turn again thy hand

As a grape-gatherer upon the shoots.

¹⁰To whom shall I speak and give warning,

That they may hear?

Behold, their ear is dull,

And they cannot attend;

Behold, the word of the Lord is become unto them a reproach,

They have no delight in it.

¹¹Therefore I am full of the fury of the Lord,

I am weary with holding in:

Pour it out upon the babes in the street,

And upon the assembly of young men together;

For even the husband with the wife shall be taken,

The aged with him that is full of days.

¹²And their houses shall be turned unto others,

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