1. Strengthen yourselves, ye sons of Benjamin, in the midst of Jerusalem, and sound the trumpet in Thecua, and set up the standard over Bethacarem: for evil is seen out of the north, and a great destruction.
2. I have likened the daughter of Sion to a beautiful and delicate woman.
3. The shepherds shall come to her with their flocks: they have pitched their tents against her round about: every one shall feed them that are under his hand.
4. Prepare ye war against her: arise, and let us go up at midday: woe unto us, for the day is declined, for the shadows of the evening are grown longer.
5. Arise, and let us go up in the night, and destroy her houses.
6. For thus saith the Lord of hosts: Hew down her trees, cast up a trench about Jerusalem: this is the city to be visited, all oppression is in the midst of her.
7. As a cistern maketh its water cold, so hath she made her wickedness cold: violence and spoil shall be heard in her, infirmity and stripes are continually before me.
8. Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee, lest I make thee desolate, a land uninhabited.
9. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: They shall gather the remains of Israel, as in a vine, even to one cluster: turn back thy hand, as a grape gatherer into the basket.
10. To whom shall I speak? and to whom shall I testify, that he may hear? behold, their ears are uncircumcised, and they cannot hear: behold the word of the Lord is become unto them a reproach: and they will not receive it.
11. Therefore am I full of the fury of the Lord, I am weary with holding in: pour it out upon the child abroad, and upon the council of the young men together: for man and woman shall be taken, the ancient and he that is full of days.
12. And their houses shall be turned over to others, with their lands and their wives together: for I will stretch for my hand upon the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord.
13. For from the least of them even to the greatest, all are given to covetousness: and from the prophet even to the priest, all are guilty of deceit.
14. And they healed the breach of the daughter of my people disgracefully, saying: Peace, peace: and there was no peace.
15. They were confounded, because they commmitted abomination: yea, rather they were not confounded with confusion, and they knew not how to blush: wherefore they shall fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall fall down, saith the Lord.