181 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
181 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
A Call to Repentance
|
|
|
|
# Chapter 5
|
|
1. Listen, you people of Israel! Listen to this funeral song I am singing:
|
|
|
|
2. "The virgin Israel has fallen,
|
|
|
|
never to rise again!
|
|
She lies abandoned on the ground,
|
|
|
|
with no one to help her up."
|
|
|
|
|
|
3. The Sovereign LORD says:
|
|
"When a city sends a thousand men to battle,
|
|
|
|
only a hundred will return.
|
|
|
|
When a town sends a hundred,
|
|
|
|
only ten will come back alive."
|
|
|
|
|
|
4. Now this is what the LORD says to the family of Israel:
|
|
"Come back to me and live!
|
|
|
|
|
|
5. Don't worship at the pagan altars at Bethel;
|
|
|
|
don't go to the shrines at Gilgal or Beersheba.
|
|
|
|
For the people of Gilgal will be dragged off into exile,
|
|
|
|
and the people of Bethel will be reduced to nothing."
|
|
|
|
|
|
6. Come back to the LORD and live!
|
|
Otherwise, he will roar through Israel like a fire,
|
|
|
|
devouring you completely.
|
|
|
|
Your gods in Bethel
|
|
|
|
won't be able to quench the flames.
|
|
|
|
|
|
7. You twist justice, making it a bitter pill for the oppressed.
|
|
|
|
You treat the righteous like dirt.
|
|
|
|
|
|
8. It is the LORD who created the stars,
|
|
|
|
the Pleiades and Orion.
|
|
|
|
He turns darkness into morning
|
|
|
|
and day into night.
|
|
|
|
He draws up water from the oceans
|
|
|
|
and pours it down as rain on the land.
|
|
The LORD is his name!
|
|
|
|
9. With blinding speed and power he destroys the strong,
|
|
|
|
crushing all their defenses.
|
|
|
|
|
|
10. How you hate honest judges!
|
|
|
|
How you despise people who tell the truth!
|
|
|
|
|
|
11. You trample the poor,
|
|
|
|
stealing their grain through taxes and unfair rent.
|
|
|
|
Therefore, though you build beautiful stone houses,
|
|
|
|
you will never live in them.
|
|
|
|
Though you plant lush vineyards,
|
|
|
|
you will never drink wine from them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
12. For I know the vast number of your sins
|
|
|
|
and the depth of your rebellions.
|
|
|
|
You oppress good people by taking bribes
|
|
|
|
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
|
|
|
|
|
|
13. So those who are smart keep their mouths shut,
|
|
|
|
for it is an evil time.
|
|
|
|
|
|
14. Do what is good and run from evil
|
|
|
|
so that you may live!
|
|
Then the LORD God of Heaven's Armies will be your helper,
|
|
|
|
just as you have claimed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
15. Hate evil and love what is good;
|
|
|
|
turn your courts into true halls of justice.
|
|
Perhaps even yet the LORD God of Heaven's Armies
|
|
will have mercy on the remnant of his people.
|
|
|
|
16. Therefore, this is what the Lord, the LORD God of Heaven's Armies, says:
|
|
"There will be crying in all the public squares
|
|
|
|
and mourning in every street.
|
|
|
|
Call for the farmers to weep with you,
|
|
|
|
and summon professional mourners to wail.
|
|
|
|
|
|
17. There will be wailing in every vineyard,
|
|
|
|
for I will destroy them all,"
|
|
says the LORD.
|
|
|
|
Warning of Coming Judgment
|
|
|
|
|
|
18. What sorrow awaits you who say,
|
|
"If only the day of the LORD were here!"
|
|
You have no idea what you are wishing for.
|
|
|
|
That day will bring darkness, not light.
|
|
|
|
|
|
19. In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion--
|
|
|
|
only to meet a bear.
|
|
|
|
Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house--
|
|
|
|
and he's bitten by a snake.
|
|
|
|
|
|
20. Yes, the day of the LORD will be dark and hopeless,
|
|
|
|
without a ray of joy or hope.
|
|
|
|
|
|
21. "I hate all your show and pretense--
|
|
|
|
the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
22. I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.
|
|
|
|
I won't even notice all your choice peace offerings.
|
|
|
|
|
|
23. Away with your noisy hymns of praise!
|
|
|
|
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
|
|
|
|
|
|
24. Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice,
|
|
|
|
an endless river of righteous living.
|
|
|
|
|
|
25. "Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, Israel?
|
|
26. No, you served your pagan gods--Sakkuth your king god and Kaiwan your star god--the images you made for yourselves.
|
|
27. So I will send you into exile, to a land east of Damascus," says the LORD, whose name is the God of Heaven's Armies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|