In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria seized Samaria and exiled Israel to Assyria. He put them in Halah, in Habor by the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
When its boughs are withered, they are broken off; the women come and make a fire with them, for they are not a people of understanding; therefore, their maker will not have mercy on them, and their Creator will show them no grace.
For behold, the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock and the store, the whole supply of bread, and the whole supply of water;
No one considers in his heart, nor is there knowledge nor understanding to say, “I have burned part of it in the fire; I also have baked bread on the coals; I have roasted meat and eaten it; and shall I make the rest into an abomination? Shall I fall down to a block of wood?”
Then you shall say in your heart, “Who bore these for me, since I have lost my children and am barren, a captive and a wanderer? And who has brought these up? Behold, I was left alone; from where have these come?”
Therefore, thus says the Lord God: Behold, My servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold, My servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; behold, My servants shall rejoice, but you shall be ashamed;
If I go out into the field, behold, those slain with the sword! And if I enter the city, behold, those who are sick with famine! Indeed, both the prophet and the priest go about into a land that they do not know.
Their nobles have sent their servants for water; they came to the cisterns and found no water. They returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and humiliated, and covered their heads.
Indeed, the stork in the sky knows her appointed times. And the turtledove and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming. But My people do not know the judgment of the Lord.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will reject you from being My priest. And because you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
They will dash you, and your children within you, to the ground. They will not leave one stone upon another within you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”