It will be like an olive tree beaten with a stick, leaving two or three olives or perhaps four or five on the highest or most fruitful branches. The LORD God of Israel has promised this.
From all over the world songs of praise are heard for the God of justice. But I feel awful, terribly miserable. Can anyone be trusted? So many are treacherous!
Then I cried out, “I'm doomed! Everything I say is sinful, and so are the words of everyone around me. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD All-Powerful.”
I heard groaning and crying. Was it a woman giving birth to her first child? No, it was Jerusalem. She was gasping for breath and begging for help. “I'm dying!” she said. “They have murdered me.”
Israel, when I, the LORD, found you long ago it was like finding grapes in a barren desert or tender young figs. Then you worshipped Baal-Peor, that disgusting idol, and you became as disgusting as the idol you loved.
And the first part of the crops from their fields and vineyards also belongs to you. The people will offer this to me, then anyone in your family who is clean may have some of it.