¹⁰ For before those days ^(A)there was no wage for man or any wage for beast, neither was there any safety from the foe for him who went out or came in, for I set every man against his neighbor.

^6 (A)You have sown much, and harvested little. ^(B)You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who ^(C)earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

⁷ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ^(D)Consider your ways. ⁸ Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that ^(E)I may take pleasure in it and that ^(F)I may be glorified, says the Lord. ^9 (G)You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, ^(H)I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house ^(I)that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. ¹⁰ Therefore ^(J)the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. ¹¹ And ^(K)I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on ^(L)the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and ^(M)on all their labors.”

¹⁶ how did you fare? ^(A)When^[a] one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. ^17 (B)I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and with mildew and with hail, ^(C)yet you did not turn to me, declares the Lord. ^18 (D)Consider from this day onward, ^(E)from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since ^(F)the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, ^(G)consider:

Not Peace, but a Sword

^34 (A)“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. ^(B)I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ^35 (C)For I have come ^(D)to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ^36 (E)And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

¹⁶ “Behold, ^(A)I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out ^(B)of the clefts of the rocks.