Woe to the sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the Lord; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.

“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

But rebels and sinners will both be broken, and those who forsake the Lord will perish.

The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.

The Song of the Vineyard

I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.

Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes,

Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.

With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria.”

So the Lord will cut off from Israel both head and tail, both palm branch and reed in a single day;

The Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame; in a single day it will burn and consume his thorns and his briers.

Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.

Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.”

See, the day of the Lord is coming —a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger— to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.

I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless.

All the lands are at rest and at peace; they break into singing.

Prepare a place to slaughter his children for the sins of their ancestors; they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities.

Joy and gladness are taken away from the orchards; no one sings or shouts in the vineyards; no one treads out wine at the presses, for I have put an end to the shouting.

The Lord Almighty has revealed this in my hearing: “Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for,” says the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

“Take up a harp, walk through the city, you forgotten prostitute; play the harp well, sing many a song, so that you will be remembered.”

From the ends of the earth we hear singing: “Glory to the Righteous One.” But I said, “I waste away, I waste away! Woe to me! The treacherous betray! With treachery the treacherous betray!”

See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed on it; the earth will conceal its slain no longer.

In that day— “Sing about a fruitful vineyard:

By this, then, will Jacob’s guilt be atoned for, and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin: When he makes all the altar stones to be like limestone crushed to pieces, no Asherah poles or incense altars will be left standing.

Woe to the Obstinate Nation

“Woe to the obstinate children,” declares the Lord, “to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin;