³ Why do you make me see wrongdoing
    and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    strife and contention arise.^(A)

7 Woe is me! For I have become like one who,
    after the summer fruit has been gathered,
    after the vintage has been gleaned,
finds no cluster to eat;
    there is no first-ripe fig for which I hunger.^(A)
2 The faithful have disappeared from the land,
    and there is no one left who is upright;
they all lie in wait for blood,
    and they hunt each other with nets.^(B)
3 Their hands are skilled to do evil;
    the official and the judge ask for a bribe,
and the powerful dictate what they desire;
    thus they pervert justice.^[a](C)
4 The best of them is like a brier,
    the most upright of them a thorn hedge.
The day of their^[b] sentinels, of their^[c] punishment, has come;
    now their confusion is at hand.^(D)

⁸ For whenever I speak, I must cry out;
    I must shout, “Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the Lord has become for me
    a reproach and derision all day long.^(A)

^2 [a]O that I had in the desert
    a traveler’s lodging place,
that I might leave my people
    and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
    a band of traitors.^(A)
3 They bend their tongues like bows;
    they have grown strong in the land for falsehood and not for truth,
for they proceed from evil to evil,
    and they do not know me, says the Lord.^(B)