A Lamentation against Israel
1Listen to this word which I take up for a lamentation over you, O house of Israel.+ 2“The virgin of Israel has fallen; She shall rise no more. She is cast down on her land; there is no one to raise her up.”+ 3For thus says the Lord Yahweh: “The city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out one hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.”+A Call to Repentance
Joel 1:13–20; Zephaniah 2:1–3; Luke 13:1–5
4For Yahweh says to the house of Israel: “Seek me, and you will live;+ 5but don’t seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don’t pass to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.+ 6Seek Yahweh, and you will live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, and there be no one to quench it in Bethel.+ 7You who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth:+ 8seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns the shadow of death into the morning, and makes the day dark with night; who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, Yahweh is his name,+ 9who brings sudden destruction on the strong, so that destruction comes on the fortress.+ 10They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks blamelessly.+ 11Therefore, because you trample on the poor, and take taxes from him of wheat: You have built houses of cut stone, but you will not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.+ 12For I know how many your offenses, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the just, who take a bribe, and who turn away the needy in the courts.+ 13Therefore a prudent person keeps silent in such a time, for it is an evil time.+ 14Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so Yahweh, the God of Armies, will be with you, as you say.+ 15Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the courts. It may be that Yahweh, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.”+