¹⁰ For before those days there were no wages for people or for animals, nor was there any safety from the foe for those who went out or came in, and I set them all against one another.^(A)

⁶ You have sown much and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.^(A)

⁷ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. ⁸ Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord.^{(B) 9} You have looked for much, but it came to little, and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? says the Lord of hosts. Because my house lies in ruins, while all of you hurry off to your own houses.^{(C) 10} Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.^{(D) 11} And I have called for a drought^[a] on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the soil produces, on humans and animals, and on all their labors.”^(E)

¹⁶ how did you fare?^[a] When 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.^{(A) 17} I struck you and every work of your hands with blight and mildew and hail, yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.^{(B) 18} Consider from this day on, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider:^(C)

Not Peace, but a Sword

³⁴ “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.^(A)

¹⁶ I am now sending for many fishermen, says 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 of the clefts of the rocks.^(A)