15. For ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol have we made an agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.
16. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I lay for foundation in Zion a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation: he that trusteth shall not make haste.
17. And I will appoint judgment for a line, and righteousness for a plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place.
18. And your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, ye shall be trodden down by it.
19. As it passeth through it shall take you; for morning by morning shall it pass through, by day and by night; and it shall be terror only to understand the report.
20. For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on, and the covering too narrow when he would wrap himself in it.
21. For Jehovah will rise up as on mount Perazim, he will be moved with anger as in the valley of Gibeon; that he may do his work, his strange work, and perform his act, his unwonted act.
22. Now therefore be ye not scorners, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard from the Lord Jehovah of hosts a consumption, and one determined, upon the whole land.
23. Give ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.
24. Doth the ploughman plough all day to sow? Is he all day opening and breaking the clods of his land?
25. Doth he not, when he hath levelled the face thereof, cast abroad dill, and scatter cummin, and set the wheat in rows, and the barley in an appointed place, and the rye in its border?
26. His God doth instruct him in his judgment, he doth teach him.
27. For the dill is not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin; but dill is beaten out with a staff, and cummin with a rod.
28. Bread corn is crushed, because he will not ever be threshing it; and if he drove the wheels of his cart and his horses over it, he would not crush it.
29. This also cometh forth from Jehovah of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel, great in wisdom.