Chapter 4
The Second Word
1 Listen to this warning, you cows of Bashan,
you women who dwell on the mount of Samaria,
you who oppress the weak and crush the needy,
who command your husbands, “Bring us something to drink!”
2 The Lord God has sworn by his holiness:
The time is surely coming upon you
when you will be dragged away with hooks,
and the last of you with fishhooks.
3 Through breaches in the wall you will leave
each one straight ahead,
and you shall be flung out atop a dungheap,
says the Lord.
Run to Your Sanctuary
4 Come to Bethel and sin!
Come to Gilgal and sin even more!
Bring your sacrifices every morning,
your tithes every third day.
5 Burn your thank offering of leavened bread,
and brag publicly about your free-will offerings.
For this is what you love to do,
O children of Israel, says the Lord God.
You Have Not Come to Me
6 Although I made your teeth
clean of food in all your cities
and spread famine in all your villages,
you still would not return to me, says the Lord.
7 I even withheld the rain from you
when there were still three months before the harvest.
I would allow rain to fall upon one town
but not upon another.
One field would be watered by rain,
while another would receive none and dry up.
8 People from two or three towns
would stagger to a neighboring town to drink water,
yet their thirst remained unquenched.
Yet even then you would not return to me,
says the Lord.
9 I struck you with mildew and blight,
I laid waste your gardens and vineyards;
the locust devoured your fig trees and your olive trees,
but still you would not return to me,
says the Lord.
10 I sent among you a plague like that of Egypt,
and I slaughtered your young men with the sword.
I allowed your horses to be captured;
I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camps.
And still you would not return to me,
says the Lord.
11 I brought destruction among you
like that which devastated Sodom and Gomorrah.
You were like a brand snatched from the fire,
and still you would not come back to me,
says the Lord.
12 Therefore, O Israel,
this is what I plan to do with you.
And because I intend to do this,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel.
Homage to the Lord
13 He is the one who formed the mountains
and created the wind,
and who reveals to men his thoughts,
who changes the dawn into darkness
and strides upon the heights of the earth:
the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name.