“The end¹ has come upon my people Israel;

I will never again pass by them.

3  The songs of the temple² shall become wailings³ in that day,”

declares the Lord God.

“So many dead bodies!”

“They are thrown everywhere!”

^s“Silence!”

4  Hear this, you who ^ttrample on the needy

and bring the poor of the land to an end,

5  saying, “When will the ^unew moon be over,

that we may sell grain?

And the Sabbath,

that we may offer wheat for sale,

that we may make the ephah small and the shekel⁴ great

and deal deceitfully with ^vfalse balances,

6  that we may ^wbuy the poor for silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals

and sell the chaff of the wheat?”

7  The Lord has sworn by the ^xpride of Jacob:

“Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

8  Shall not the land tremble on this account,

and everyone mourn who dwells in it,

and all of it ^yrise like the Nile,

and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”

9  “And on that day,” declares the Lord God,

^z“I will make the sun go down at noon

and ^adarken the earth in broad daylight.

10  I will turn your feasts into mourning

and ^ball your songs into lamentation;

^cI will bring sackcloth on every waist

and ^dbaldness on every head;

I will make it like the mourning ^efor an only son

and the end of it like a bitter day.

11  “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God,

“when I will send a famine on the land—

not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,

but ^fof hearing the words of the Lord.

12  They shall wander from sea to sea,

and from north to east;

they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,

but they shall not find it.

13  “In that day the lovely virgins and the young men

shall faint for thirst.

14  Those who swear by the Guilt of Samaria,

and say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’

and, ‘As the Way of ^gBeersheba lives,’

they shall fall, and never rise again.”

“Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake,

and shatter them on the heads of all the people;⁶

and those who are left of them I will kill with the sword;

not one of them shall flee away;

not one of them shall escape.

2  ^h“If they dig into Sheol,

from there shall my hand take them;

ⁱif they climb up to heaven,

from there I will bring them down.

3  If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,

from there I will search them out and take them;

and if they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea,

there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them.

4  And if they go into captivity before their enemies,

there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them;

and I will fix my eyes upon them

^jfor evil and not for good.”

5  The Lord God of hosts,

he who touches the earth and it melts,

and ^kall who dwell in it mourn,

and all of it rises like the Nile,

and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt;

6  who builds his upper chambers in the heavens

and founds his vault upon the earth;

^lwho calls for the waters of the sea

and pours them out upon the surface of the earth—

the Lord is his name.

7  “Are you not like the Cushites to me,

O people of Israel?” declares the Lord.

“Did I not bring up ^mIsrael from the land of Egypt,

and the Philistines from ⁿCaphtor and the Syrians from ^oKir?

8  Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom,

and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground,

except that ^pI will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”

declares the Lord.

9  “For behold, I will command,

and shake the house of Israel among all the nations

as one shakes with a ^qsieve,

but no pebble shall fall to the earth.

10  All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,

^rwho say, ^s‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’

11  ^t“In that day I will raise up

the booth of David that is fallen

and repair its breaches,

and raise up its ruins

and ^urebuild it as in the days of old,

12  that they may possess the remnant of Edom

and all the nations who are ^vcalled by my name,”⁷

declares the Lord who does this.

13  “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord,

^w“when the plowman shall overtake the reaper

and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed;

^xthe mountains shall drip sweet wine,

and all the hills shall flow with it.

14  ^yI will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,

and they shall rebuild the ^zruined cities and inhabit them;

they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,

and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

15  ^aI will plant them on their land,

and they shall never again be uprooted

out of the land that I have given them,”

says the Lord your God.