Study Desk

For a voice is declaring from Dan, and is proclaiming disaster from the mountain of Ephraim.

"You obtained this for yourself because of your way and your deeds. This is your doom, for it is bitter, yes, it has reached up to your heart."

My bowels, my bowels! I writhe! The walls of my heart! My heart is restless within me, I cannot keep silent, for I hear in my inner self the sound of a horn, the alarm of war.

Destruction on destruction is proclaimed, for all of the land is devastated. Suddenly my tents are devastated, my tent curtains in a moment.

"For my people are foolish, they have not known me. They are foolish children, and they do not have insight. They are skillful at doing evil, and they do not know how to do good."

For thus says Yahweh, "All of the land will be a desolation, yet I will not make a complete desolation.

For I heard a voice like an ill woman, anxiety like a woman who bears her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion. She is gasping for breath, she is spreading out her hands: "Woe is me, for I am becoming tired before killers."

O Yahweh, do not your eyes look for honesty? You have struck them, but they felt no pain, you have destroyed them, they refused to take discipline. They have hardened their faces more than rock, they have refused to turn back.

Then I said, "They are just simple people, they are foolish, for they know not the way of Yahweh, the law of their God.

Let me go to the great, and let me speak with them, for they know the way of Yahweh, the law of their God." However, they together have broken the yoke, they have torn to pieces the bonds.

Go up through her vineyards and destroy, but you must not make complete destruction. Remove her branches, for they are not to Yahweh.

For the house of Israel and the house of Judah have dealt utterly treacherously with me," declares Yahweh.

"They have denied Yahweh, and have said, ‘Not he, for evil will not come on us, we will see neither sword nor famine.

Do you not revere me?" declares Yahweh, "Do you not tremble before me? For I have placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, as an everlasting limit, and it cannot pass over it, and they rise and fall loudly, but they cannot prevail, and its waves roar, but they cannot pass over it.

But for this people is a stubborn and rebellious heart, they have turned aside and have gone away.

And they do not say in their hearts, ‘Let us fear please Yahweh our God, the one who gives the autumn rain and the spring rain in its season, the set times of the harvest he keeps for us.'

For wicked people are found among my people, they lie in wait like the hiding of fowlers, they set up a trap, they catch humans.

Flee for safety, O children of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem. And in Tekoa blow a horn, and on Beth-haccherem lift up a signal, for evil looks down from the north, and a great destruction.

Sanctify war against her. Arise, and let us attack at noon. Woe to us, for the day turns, for the shadows of evening are lengthened.

For thus says Yahweh of hosts, "Cut down trees and heap up a siege ramp against Jerusalem. This is the city that must be punished, its oppression is in its midst.