1. I WILL sing to my beloved the canticle of my cousin concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a hill in a fruitful place.
2. And he fenced it in, and picked the stones out of it, and planted it with the choicest vines, and built a tower in the midst thereof, and set up a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.
3. And now, O ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and ye men of Juda, judge between me and my vineyard.
4. What is there that I ought to do more to my vineyard, that I have not done to it? was it that I looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it hath brought forth wild grapes?
5. And now I will shew you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be wasted: I will break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down.
6. And I will make it desolate: it shall not be pruned, and it shall not be digged: but briers and thorns shall come up: and I will command the clouds to rain no rain upon it.
7. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel: and the man of Juda, his pleasant plant: and I looked that he should do judgment, and behold iniquity: and do justice, and behold a cry.
8. Woe to you that join house to house and lay field to field, even to the end of the place: shall you alone dwell in the midst of the earth?
9. These things are in my ears, saith the Lord of hosts: Unless many great and fair houses shall become desolate, without an inhabitant.
10. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one little measure, and thirty bushels of seed shall yield three bushels.
11. Woe to you that rise up early in the morning to follow drunkenness, and to drink till the evening, to be inflamed with wine.
12. The harp, and the lyre, and the timbrel, and the pipe, and wine are in your feasts: and the work of the Lord you regard not, nor do you consider the works of his hands.
13. Therefore is my people led away captive, because they had not knowledge, and their nobles have perished with famine, and their multitude were dried up with thirst.
14. Therefore hath hell enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds, and their strong ones, and their people, and their high and glorious ones shall go down into it.
15. And man shall be brought down, and man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be brought low.
16. And the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and the holy God shall be sanctified in justice.
17. And the lambs shall feed according to their order, and strangers shall eat the deserts turned into fruitfulness.
18. Woe to you that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as the rope of a cart.