1. “Whenever I want to heal my people Israel and make them prosperous again, all I can see is their wickedness and the evil they do. They cheat one another; they break into houses and steal; they rob people in the streets.
2. It never enters their heads that I will remember all this evil; but their sins surround them, and I cannot avoid seeing them.”
3. The Lord says, “People deceive the king and his officers by their evil plots.
4. They are all treacherous and disloyal. Their hatred smoulders like the fire in an oven, which is not stirred by the baker until the dough is ready to bake.
5. On the day of the king's celebration they made the king and his officials drunk and foolish with wine.
6. Yes, they burned like an oven with their plotting. All night their anger smouldered, and in the morning it burst into flames.
7. “In the heat of their anger they murdered their rulers. Their kings have been assassinated one after another, but no one prays to me for help.”
8. The Lord says, “The people of Israel are like a half-baked loaf of bread. They rely on the nations around them
9. and do not realize that this reliance on foreigners has robbed them of their strength. Their days are numbered, but they don't even know it.
10. The arrogance of the people of Israel cries out against them. In spite of everything that has happened, they have not returned to me, the Lord their God.
11. Israel flits about like a silly pigeon; first her people call on Egypt for help, and then they run to Assyria!