Hear this, priests! Pay attention, house of Israel! Listen, royal house! For the judgement applies to you because you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread out on Tabor.
The best of them is like a briar; the most upright is worse than a hedge of thorns. The day of your watchmen, the day of your punishment, is coming; at this time their panic is here.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, since they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
Your prophets saw visions for you that were empty and deceptive; , they did not reveal your iniquity and so restore your fortunes. They saw pronouncements for you that were empty and misleading.
And I replied, ‘Oh no, Lord God! The prophets are telling them, “You won’t see sword or suffer famine. I will certainly give you lasting peace in this place.” ’
Once, as the Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a raiding party, so they threw the man into Elisha’s tomb. When he touched Elisha’s bones, the man revived and stood up!
this captain had answered the man of God, ‘Look, even if the Lord were to make windows in heaven, could this really happen? ’ Elisha had said, ‘You will in fact see it with your own eyes, but you won’t eat any of it.’
Then the captain, the king’s right-hand man, , responded to the man of God, ‘Look, even if the Lord were to make windows in heaven, could this really happen? ’ Elisha announced, ‘You will in fact see it with your own eyes, but you won’t eat any of it.’
So Naaman went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, according to the command of the man of God. Then his skin was restored and became like the skin of a small boy, and he was clean.
But Elisha’s attendant asked, ‘What? Am I to set this before a hundred men? ’ ‘Give it to the people to eat,’ Elisha said, ‘for this is what the Lord says: “They will eat, and they will have some left over.” ’
Elisha went out to the spring, threw salt in it, and said, ‘This is what the Lord says: “I have healed this water. No longer will death or unfruitfulness result from it.” ’
He took the mantle Elijah had dropped, and he struck the water. ‘Where is the Lord God of Elijah? ’ he asked. He struck the water himself, and it parted to the right and the left, and Elisha crossed over.
‘The Lord asked him, “How? ” ‘He said, “I will go and become a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” ‘Then he said, “You will certainly entice him and prevail. Go and do that.”
Then Zedekiah son of Chenaanah made iron horns and said, ‘This is what the Lord says: “You will gore the Arameans with these until they are finished off.” ’
So the king of Israel gathered the prophets, about four hundred men, and asked them, ‘Should I go against Ramoth-gilead for war or should I refrain? ’ They replied, ‘March up, and the Lord will hand it over to the king.’
After a long time, the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year: ‘Go and present yourself to Ahab. I will send rain on the surface of the land.’
Now Elijah the Tishbite, from the Gilead settlers, , said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord God of Israel lives, in whose presence I stand, there will be no dew or rain during these years except by my command! ’
For certainly no one knows his time: like fish caught in a cruel net or like birds caught in a trap, so people are trapped in an evil time as it suddenly falls on them.
The days of punishment have come; the days of retribution have come. Let Israel recognise it! The prophet is a fool, and the inspired man is insane, because of the magnitude of your iniquity and hostility.
for I was like a docile lamb led to slaughter. I didn’t know that they had devised plots against me: ‘Let’s destroy the tree with its fruit; let’s cut him off from the land of the living so that his name will no longer be remembered.’