⁹ “Band together,^[l] you peoples,
    but be shattered!
        Listen, all you distant countries!
Strap on your armor,
        but be shattered.^[m]
10 Take counsel together,
    but it will all be for nothing;
go ahead and talk,
    but^[n] it will all be for nothing,^[o]
        for God is with us.”^[p]

¹² “Don’t call conspiracy everything
    that this people calls conspiracy,
and don’t fear what they fear,
    or live in terror.
¹³ The Lord of the Heavenly Armies—
    he’s the one you are to regard as holy.
Let him be the one whom you fear,
    and let him be the one before whom you stand in terror!
¹⁴ Then he will be a sanctuary,
    but for both houses of Israel
he’ll also be a stone with which someone strikes himself,
    a rock one stumbles over,
        a trap and a snare to those who live in Jerusalem.
¹⁵ Many will stumble on them;
    They’ll fall and be broken;
        They’ll be snared and captured.

¹⁶ “Bind up the testimony,
    and seal up the teaching among my disciples.
¹⁷ I’ll wait for the Lord,
    who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob,
        and I’ll put my trust in him.
¹⁸ Watch out! I and the children
    whom the Lord has given me
are a sign and a wonder^[s] in Israel
    from the Lord of the Heavenly Armies,
        who resides on Mount Zion.”

‘Ask the mediums your questions,
    and quiz the spiritists who chirp and mutter,’
shouldn’t a people instead be consulting their God—^[t]
    and not the dead—
on behalf of those who are living
²⁰ for instruction and for testimony?
    Surely they are speaking like this
        because the truth^[u] hasn’t dawned on them.

²¹ “They’ll pass through the land,^[v]
    while^[w] greatly distressed and hungry.
When they are hungry,
    they’ll become enraged,
and they’ll curse their king and their god.^[x]
    They’ll turn their faces upwards,
²² or they’ll look toward the^[y] earth,
    but they’ll see only distress and darkness,
the gloom that comes from anguish,
    and then they’ll be thrown into total darkness.”