⁸ Jehovah the Almighty Lord has sworn by his own name, “I despise the pride and false glory of Israel and hate their beautiful homes. I will turn over this city and everything in it to her enemies.”

⁹ If there are as few as ten of them left and only one house, they too will perish. ¹⁰ A man’s uncle will be the only one left to bury him, and when he goes in to carry his body from the house, he will ask the only one still alive inside, “Are any others left?” And the answer will be, “No,” and he will add, “Shhh . . . don’t mention the name of the Lord—he might hear you.”

¹¹ For the Lord commanded this: that homes both great and small should be smashed to pieces. ¹² Can horses run on rocks? Can oxen plow the sea? Stupid even to ask—but no more stupid than what you do when you make a mockery of justice and corrupt and sour all that should be good and right. ¹³ And just as stupid is your rejoicing in how great you are when you are less than nothing—and priding yourselves on your own tiny power!

¹⁴ “O Israel, I will bring against you a nation that will bitterly oppress you from your northern boundary to your southern tip, all the way from Hamath to the brook of Arabah,” says the Lord, the Lord Almighty.