1. Listen to this word which I take up for a lamentation over you, O house of Israel.
2. “The virgin of Israel has fallen; She shall rise no more. She is cast down on her land; there is no one to raise her up.”
3. For thus says the Lord Yahweh: “The city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out one hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.”
4. For Yahweh says to the house of Israel: “Seek me, and you will live;
5. but don’t seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don’t pass to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.
6. Seek Yahweh, and you will live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, and there be no one to quench it in Bethel.
7. You who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth:
8. seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns the shadow of death into the morning, and makes the day dark with night; who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, Yahweh is his name,
9. who brings sudden destruction on the strong, so that destruction comes on the fortress.
10. They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks blamelessly.