You will have to feel around in the daylight like a blind person. You will fail in everything you do. People will hurt you and steal from you every day, and no one will save you.
The land’s great harvest belongs to the kings you have put over us because of our sins. Those kings rule over us and our cattle as they please, so we are in much trouble.
We are like the blind feeling our way along a wall. We feel our way as if we had no eyes. In the brightness of day we trip as if it were night. We are like dead men among the strong.
The sound of loud crying is heard from Jerusalem: ‘We are truly ruined! We are truly ashamed! We must leave our land, because our houses are in ruins.’ ”
I will make life hard on the people; they will walk around like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord. Their blood will be poured out like dust, and their insides will be dumped like trash.
Take these men with you and share in their cleansing ceremony. Pay their expenses so they can shave their heads. Then it will prove to everyone that what they have heard about you is not true and that you follow the law of Moses in your own life.
I want you to understand this secret, brothers and sisters, so you will understand that you do not know everything: Part of Israel has been made stubborn, but that will change when many who are not Jews have come to God.
In the same year those people destroyed the Israelites who lived east of the Jordan River in the region of Gilead, where the Amorites lived. So the Israelites suffered for eighteen years.