1. “Flee for safety, you children of Benjamin, out of the middle of Jerusalem! Blow the shofar in Tekoa and raise up a signal on Beth Haccherem, for evil looks out from the north with a great destruction.
2. I will cut off the beautiful and delicate one, the daughter of Zion.
3. Shepherds with their flocks will come to her. They will pitch their tents against her all around. They will feed everyone in his place.”
4. “Prepare war against her! Arise! Let’s go up at noon. Woe to us! For the day declines, for the shadows of the evening are stretched out.
5. Arise! Let’s go up by night, and let’s destroy her palaces.”
6. For the Lord of Hosts said, “Cut down trees, and cast up a mound against Jerusalem. This is the city to be visited. She is wholly oppression within herself.
7. As a well produces its waters, so she produces her wickedness. Violence and destruction is heard in her. Sickness and wounds are continually before me.
8. Be instructed, Jerusalem, lest my soul be alienated from you; lest I make you a desolation, an uninhabited land.”
9. the Lord of Hosts says, “They will thoroughly glean the remnant of Israel like a vine. Turn again your hand as a grape gatherer into the baskets.”
10. To whom should I speak and testify, that they may hear? Behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they can’t listen. Behold, the Lord’s word has become a reproach to them. They have no delight in it.
11. Therefore I am full of the Lord’s wrath. I am weary with holding it in.“Pour it out on the children in the street,and on the assembly of young men together;for even the husband with the wife will be taken,the aged with him who is full of days.
12. Their houses will be turned to others,their fields and their wives together;for I will stretch out my hand on the inhabitants of the land, says the Lord.”
13. “For from their least even to their greatest, everyone is given to covetousness.From the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.
14. They have healed also the hurt of my people superficially,saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ when there is no peace.