“And now, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. See, My Messenger goes before you. And in the day of My visitation I shall visit their sin upon them.”
therefore thus said יהוה of hosts, ‘See, I am punishing them, the young men shall die by the sword, their sons and their daughters shall die by scarcity of food.
And if you do not listen, my being shall weep in secret for your pride, and my eyes bitterly weep and run down with tears, because the flock of יהוה shall be taken captive.
“And יהוה could no longer bear it, because of the evil of your deeds and because of the abominations which you did. Therefore your land is a ruin, an object of astonishment, a curse, and without an inhabitant, as it is this day.
“Were they ashamed when they had done abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed, nor did they know how to blush. So they shall fall among those who fall. They shall stumble in the time of their visitation,” said יהוה.
The best of them is like a prickly plant, the most straight is sharper than a thorn hedge. The day of your watchman and your punishment has come, now is their confusion.
“For look, I am raising up a shepherd in the land who does not visit those straying, nor seek the young, nor heal those that are broken, nor feed those that still stand. But he does eat the flesh of the fat and tear off their hooves.
Clean and undefiled religion before the Elohim and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
