Your land is a desolation; your cities burned with fire. Strangers devour your land before you; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

But this is a people robbed and plundered; all of them are snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses. They are as prey, and no one delivers them; spoils, and no one says, Give it back!

Who gave Jacob for a spoils, and Israel to robbers? Was it not Jehovah, against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in His ways, nor did they obey His Law.

In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

Therefore Jehovah his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria. They struck him, and carried away a great multitude of them as captives, and brought them to Damascus. Then he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him down with a great slaughter.

Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, killed Maaseiah the king's son, Azrikam the officer over the house, and Elkanah who was second to the king.

The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's manger, but Israel does not know; My people have not discerned.

When its branches are dried up, they shall be broken off; the women come and set them on fire; for it is a people of no understanding. Therefore He who made them will not have mercy on them, and He who formed them will show them no favor.

Yea, the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times; and the turtledove and the swallow and the crane observe the time of their coming; but my people do not know the judgment of Jehovah.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest to Me. Since you have forgotten the Law of your God, I also will forget your sons.

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is a debtor.

And, Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it is a debtor.

Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it.

And he who swears by Heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.

Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.

and tear you down, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.

And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

For everyone practicing evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

And even as they do not like to have God in their full true knowledge, God gives them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;

For of this they are willfully ignorant: that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water,

If I go out into the field, then I see those killed with the sword! And if I enter into the city, then, behold, those that are sick from famine! Yes, both the prophet and the priest have gone up into a land that they do not know.

The tongue of the infant cleaves to the roof of his mouth in thirst; the young children ask for bread; there is none broken to them.

Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets; those brought up in scarlet embrace refuse heaps.

Better off are the ones slain by the sword than the ones slain by hunger; for they pine away, pierced through for lack of the fruits of the fields.

And their nobles have sent their little ones for water; they came to the cisterns, and found no water. They returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads.

In that day the beautiful virgins and the young men shall faint with thirst.