And they said to him, “Thus said Ḥizqiyahu, ‘This day is a day of distress and rebuke and scorn, for the children have come to birth, but there is no strength to bring forth.
“I have declared the former events from the beginning, and they went forth from My mouth, and I made you hear them. Suddenly I acted, and they came to be.
therefore I declared it to you long ago. Before it came I made you hear, lest you should say, ‘My idol has done them, and my carved image and my moulded image commanded them.’
“For I am like a lion to Ephrayim, and like a young lion to the house of Yehuḏah. I Myself tear them and go, I take them away, and there is no one to deliver.
The days of punishment have come, the days of retribution have come. Yisra’ĕl knows! The prophet is a fool, the ‘man of the Spirit’ is mad, because of the greatness of your crookedness, and great is the enmity.
“Therefore thus said יהוה, ‘Your wife shall become a whore in the city, and your sons and daughters fall by the sword, and your land be divided by a measuring line, and you die in a defiled land, and Yisra’ĕl shall certainly be exiled from its land.’ ”
“And the high places of Yitsḥaq shall be laid waste, and the set-apart places of Yisra’ĕl shall be destroyed. And I shall rise with the sword against the house of Yaroḇ‛am.”
“But My words and My laws, which I commanded My servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers?” “Then they turned back and said, ‘As יהוה of hosts planned to do to us, according to our ways and according to our deeds, so He has done with us.’” ’ ”
But I have said these words to you, so that when the hour comes you remember that I told them to you. And these words I did not say to you at the beginning, for I was with you.