You will grope in broad daylight as blind people grope in their blindness. You won’t be successful in anything you do. As long as you live, you will be oppressed and robbed with no one to rescue you.
The many products ⌞from our land⌟ go to the kings you put over us. This is because of our sins. These kings have control over our bodies, and they do as they please with our livestock. We are in agony.
We grope like blind men along a wall. We grope like people without eyes. We stumble at noon as if it were twilight. We are like dead people among healthy people.
“I will bring such distress on humans that they will walk like they are blind, because they have sinned against the Lord.” Their blood will be poured out like dust and their intestines like manure.
Take these men, go through the purification ceremony with them, and pay the expenses to shave their heads. Then everyone will know that what they’ve been told about you isn’t true. Instead, they’ll see that you carefully follow Moses’ Teachings.
Brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery so that you won’t become arrogant. The minds of some Israelites have become closed until all of God’s non-Jewish people are included.
They oppressed and crushed the people of Israel that year. For 18 years they oppressed all who lived east of the Jordan River in the land of the Amorites in Gilead.