1 For look, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, is about to remove from Jerusalem and from Judah every prop and stay: every supply of bread and every supply of water;
2 the hero and the fighting man, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder,
3 the commander of fifty and the dignitary, the counselor, the skilled sorcerer and the clever enchanter.
4 I will set boys over them as their princes, and the capricious will rule over them.
5 The people will be oppressed, man by man, each by his neighbor; the young will bully the old, and the lowly the honored.
6 A man will grab his brother in his father's house: "You own a cloak; be our ruler, and let this ruin be in your charge."
7 On that day he will protest, "I will not be the one to bind up wounds. There is no bread in my house and no cloak; do not set me up as ruler of the people."
8 Jerusalem has tottered and Judah has collapsed, because their words and their actions are against the LORD, provoking the eyes of his glory.
9 The expression on their faces testifies against them; they announce their sin like Sodom and make no secret of it. Woe to their souls, for they have repaid themselves with evil!
10 Say of the righteous that it will go well, for they will eat the fruit of what they have done.
11 Woe to the wicked! It will go badly, for what his own hands have done will be done to him.
12 As for my people, a child is their taskmaster and women govern them. My people, those who lead you lead you astray, and they have muddled the way you should go.
13 The LORD rises to argue his case; he stands up to judge the peoples.
14 The LORD comes in judgment against the elders of his people and its princes: "You are the ones who have stripped the vineyard bare; what you robbed from the poor is in your houses.
15 What right have you to crush my people and grind the faces of the poor?" declares the Lord GOD of hosts.
16 The LORD said: Since the daughters of Zion are proud and walk about with necks stretched high and eyes flirting, stepping daintily as they go and making the ornaments on their feet jingle,
17 the Lord will make the scalps of the daughters of Zion scabby, and the LORD will expose their foreheads.
18 On that day the Lord will take away the beauty of their anklets, their sun-shaped and moon-shaped ornaments;
19 the drops, the bangles and the veils;
20 the turbans, the step chains, the sashes, the perfume bottles and the charms;
21 the finger rings and the nose rings;
22 the fine robes, the overgarments, the wraps and the purses;
23 the hand mirrors, the linen undergarments, the headdresses and the light shawls.
24 There will be stench where there was perfume, a rope where there was a sash, baldness where the hair was carefully arranged, a binding of sackcloth where there was a fine robe, a burn mark where there was beauty.
25 Your men will fall by the sword, and your strength in war.
26 Her gates will moan and grieve; stripped bare, she will sit on the ground.