lest at any time [the enemy] seize my soul as a lion, while there is none to ransom, nor to save.

Will not all the workers of iniquity know, who eat up my people as they would eat bread? They have not called upon the Lord.

For Your sake we are killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for slaughter.

They have said in their heart, [even] all their kindred together, Come, let us abolish the feasts of the Lord from the earth.

Deliver not to the wild beasts a soul that gives praise to You: forget not forever the souls of Your poor.

Look upon Your covenant; for the dark [places] of the earth are filled with the habitations of iniquity.

They have given the dead bodies of Your servants [to be] food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of Your holy ones for the wild beasts of the earth.

They have shed their blood as water, round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury [them].

For they have devoured Jacob, and laid his place waste.

Many a time have they warred against me from my youth: and yet they prevailed not against me.

The sinners wrought upon my back: they prolonged their iniquity.

Why do you wrong My people, and shame the face of the poor?

And now why are you here? Thus says the Lord: Because My people were taken for nothing, wonder and howl. Thus says the Lord: On account of you My name is continually blasphemed among the Gentiles.

Behold, your eyes are not good, nor your heart, but [they go] after your covetousness, and after the innocent blood to shed it, and after acts of injustice and slaughter, to commit them.

You scatter for Me the weapons of war, and I will scatter nations by you, and will destroy kings by means of you.

And by you I will scatter youth and maid; and by you I will scatter man and woman.

Who hate good, and seek evil; who tear their skins off them, and their flesh off their bones:

even as they devoured the flesh of My people, and stripped their skins off them, and broke their bones, and divided [them] as flesh for the caldron, and as meat for the pot,

I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.

And in those days after a length of time, the king of Egypt died. And the children of Israel groaned because of their tasks, and cried, and their cry because of their tasks went up to God.

And God heard their groanings, and God remembered His covenant [that He] made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Because you rejoiced, and boasted, [while] plundering My heritage; because you exulted as calves in the grass, and pushed with the horn as bulls.

And I will give [power] to My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, having been clothed in sackcloth."