² Hear, you peoples, all of you;
    hearken, O earth, and all that is in it;
and let the Lord God be a witness against you,
    the Lord from his holy temple.
³ For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of his place,
    and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
⁴ And the mountains will melt under him
    and the valleys will be cleft,
like wax before the fire,
    like waters poured down a steep place.
⁵ All this is for the transgression of Jacob
    and for the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob?
    Is it not Samar′ia?
And what is the sin of the house^[a] of Judah?
    Is it not Jerusalem?
⁶ Therefore I will make Samar′ia a heap in the open country,
    a place for planting vineyards;
and I will pour down her stones into the valley,
    and uncover her foundations.
⁷ All her images shall be beaten to pieces,
    all her hires shall be burned with fire,
    and all her idols I will lay waste;
for from the hire of a harlot she gathered them,
    and to the hire of a harlot they shall return.

⁸ For this I will lament and wail;
    I will go stripped and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
    and mourning like the ostriches.
⁹ For her wound^[b] is incurable;
    and it has come to Judah,
it has reached to the gate of my people,
    to Jerusalem.

2 Woe to those who devise wickedness
    and work evil upon their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
    because it is in the power of their hand.
² They covet fields, and seize them;
    and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
    a man and his inheritance.
³ Therefore thus says the Lord:
Behold, against this family I am devising evil,
    from which you cannot remove your necks;
and you shall not walk haughtily,
    for it will be an evil time.
⁴ In that day they shall take up a taunt song against you,
    and wail with bitter lamentation,
and say, “We are utterly ruined;
    he changes the portion of my people;
how he removes it from me!
    Among our captors^[d] he divides our fields.”
⁵ Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot
    in the assembly of the Lord.

¹² I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob,
    I will gather the remnant of Israel;
I will set them together
    like sheep in a fold,
like a flock in its pasture,
    a noisy multitude of men.
¹³ He who opens the breach will go up before them;
    they will break through and pass the gate,
    going out by it.
Their king will pass on before them,
    the Lord at their head.

3 And I said:
Hear, you heads of Jacob
    and rulers of the house of Israel!
Is it not for you to know justice?—
²     you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin from off my people,
    and their flesh from off their bones;
³ who eat the flesh of my people,
    and flay their skin from off them,
and break their bones in pieces,
    and chop them up like meat^[g] in a kettle,
    like flesh in a caldron.

4 It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and shall be raised up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
²     and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
    and we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
³ He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide for strong nations afar off;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war any more;
⁴ but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and none shall make them afraid;
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

⁶ In that day, says the Lord,
    I will assemble the lame
and gather those who have been driven away,
    and those whom I have afflicted;
⁷ and the lame I will make the remnant;
    and those who were cast off, a strong nation;
and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion
    from this time forth and for evermore.

^2 [l] But you, O Bethlehem Eph′rathah,
    who are little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
    from ancient days.
³ Therefore he shall give them up until the time
    when she who is in travail has brought forth;
then the rest of his brethren shall return
    to the people of Israel.
⁴ And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great
    to the ends of the earth.

⁷ Then the remnant of Jacob shall be
    in the midst of many peoples
like dew from the Lord,
    like showers upon the grass,
which tarry not for men
    nor wait for the sons of men.
⁸ And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations,
    in the midst of many peoples,
like a lion among the beasts of the forest,
    like a young lion among the flocks of sheep,
which, when it goes through, treads down
    and tears in pieces, and there is none to deliver.
⁹ Your hand shall be lifted up over your adversaries,
    and all your enemies shall be cut off.

6 Hear what the Lord says:
Arise, plead your case before the mountains,
    and let the hills hear your voice.
² Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
    and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
    and he will contend with Israel.

⁶ “With what shall I come before the Lord,
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
⁸ He has showed you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,^[p]
    and to walk humbly with your God?

⁹ The voice of the Lord cries to the city—
    and it is sound wisdom to fear thy name:
“Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city!^[q]
10 Can I forget^[r] the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked,
    and the scant measure that is accursed?
¹¹ Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales
    and with a bag of deceitful weights?
¹² Your^[s] rich men are full of violence;
    your^[t] inhabitants speak lies,
    and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
¹³ Therefore I have begun^[u] to smite you,
    making you desolate because of your sins.
¹⁴ You shall eat, but not be satisfied,
    and there shall be hunger in your inward parts;
you shall put away, but not save,
    and what you save I will give to the sword.
¹⁵ You shall sow, but not reap;
    you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;
    you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.
¹⁶ For you have kept the statutes of Omri,^[v]
    and all the works of the house of Ahab;
    and you have walked in their counsels;
that I may make you a desolation, and your^[w] inhabitants a hissing;
    so you shall bear the scorn of the peoples.”^[x]

7 Woe is me! For I have become
as when the summer fruit has been gathered,
    as when the vintage has been gleaned:
there is no cluster to eat,
    no first-ripe fig which my soul desires.
² The godly man has perished from the earth,
    and there is none upright among men;
they all lie in wait for blood,
    and each hunts his brother with a net.
³ Their hands are upon what is evil, to do it diligently;
    the prince and the judge ask for a bribe,
and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul;
    thus they weave it together.
⁴ The best of them is like a brier,
    the most upright of them a thorn hedge.
The day of their^[y] watchmen, of their^[z] punishment, has come;
    now their confusion is at hand.
⁵ Put no trust in a neighbor,
    have no confidence in a friend;
guard the doors of your mouth
    from her who lies in your bosom;
⁶ for the son treats the father with contempt,
    the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
    a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.
⁷ But as for me, I will look to the Lord,
    I will wait for the God of my salvation;
    my God will hear me.

⁸ Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
    when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
    the Lord will be a light to me.
⁹ I will bear the indignation of the Lord
    because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
    and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me forth to the light;
    I shall behold his deliverance.
¹⁰ Then my enemy will see,
    and shame will cover her who said to me,
    “Where is the Lord your God?”
My eyes will gloat over her;
    now she will be trodden down
    like the mire of the streets.

¹¹ A day for the building of your walls!
    In that day the boundary shall be far extended.
¹² In that day they will come to you,
    from Assyria to^[aa] Egypt,
and from Egypt to the River,
    from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.
¹³ But the earth will be desolate
    because of its inhabitants,
    for the fruit of their doings.

¹⁸ Who is a God like thee, pardoning iniquity
    and passing over transgression
    for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger for ever
    because he delights in steadfast love.
¹⁹ He will again have compassion upon us,
    he will tread our iniquities under foot.
Thou wilt cast all our^[ac] sins
    into the depths of the sea.
²⁰ Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob
    and steadfast love to Abraham,
as thou hast sworn to our fathers
    from the days of old.

47 And after him Nathan rose up
    to prophesy in the days of David.

² As the fat is selected from the peace offering,
    so David was selected from the sons of Israel.
³ He played with lions as with young goats,
    and with bears as with lambs of the flock.
⁴ In his youth did he not kill a giant,
    and take away reproach from the people,
when he lifted his hand with a stone in the sling
    and struck down the boasting of Goliath?
⁵ For he appealed to the Lord, the Most High,
    and he gave him strength in his right hand
to slay a man mighty in war,
    to exalt the power^[a] of his people.
⁶ So they glorified him for his ten thousands,
    and praised him for the blessings of the Lord,
    when the glorious diadem was bestowed upon him.
⁷ For he wiped out his enemies on every side,
    and annihilated his adversaries the Philistines;
    he crushed their power^[b] even to this day.
⁸ In all that he did he gave thanks
    to the Holy One, the Most High, with ascriptions of glory;
he sang praise with all his heart,
    and he loved his Maker.
⁹ He placed singers before the altar,
    to make sweet melody with their voices.
¹⁰ He gave beauty to the feasts,
    and arranged their times throughout the year,^[c]
while they praised God’s^[d] holy name,
    and the sanctuary resounded from early morning.
¹¹ The Lord took away his sins,
    and exalted his power^[e] for ever;
he gave him the covenant of kings
    and a throne of glory in Israel.

¹⁴ And you will have joy and gladness,
and many will rejoice at his birth;
¹⁵ for he will be great before the Lord,
and he shall drink no wine nor strong drink,
and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit,
even from his mother’s womb.
¹⁶ And he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God,
¹⁷ and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Eli′jah,
to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,
and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”