And you shall go out through the breaches, every one straight before her; and you shall be cast forth into Harmon,” says the Lord.

offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel!” says the Lord God.

Israel Rejects Correction

“I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me,” says the Lord.

so two or three cities wandered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied; yet you did not return to me,” says the Lord.

“I smote you with blight and mildew; I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards; your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me,” says the Lord.

“I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men with the sword; I carried away your horses; and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me,” says the Lord.

“I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomor′rah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me,” says the Lord.

For lo, he who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought; who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!

For thus says the Lord God: “The city that went forth a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went forth a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.”

For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live;

Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel,

He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name,

Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said.

Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: “In all the squares there shall be wailing; and in all the streets they shall say, ‘Alas! alas!’ They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation,

and in all vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through the midst of you,” says the Lord.

The Day of the Lord a Dark Day

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light;

Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

therefore I will take you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

The Lord God has sworn by himself (says the Lord, the God of hosts): “I abhor the pride of Jacob, and hate his strongholds; and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.”

And when a man’s kinsman, he who burns him, shall take him up to bring the bones out of the house, and shall say to him who is in the innermost parts of the house, “Is there still any one with you?” he shall say, “No”; and he shall say, “Hush! We must not mention the name of the Lord.”

For behold, the Lord commands, and the great house shall be smitten into fragments, and the little house into bits.

“For behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel,” says the Lord, the God of hosts; “and they shall oppress you from the entrance of Hamath to the Brook of the Arabah.”

Locusts, Fire, and a Plumb Line

Thus the Lord God showed me: behold, he was forming locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and lo, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings.

When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, “O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!”