1 "Woe to the rebellious children," declares the LORD, "who make plans that are not mine, who make an alliance not prompted by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin;
2 who start off down to Egypt without consulting me, to seek safety under Pharaoh's protection and take shelter in Egypt's shade!
3 Pharaoh's protection will turn to your shame, and the shelter of Egypt's shade to your humiliation.
4 For his officials are at Zoan, and his envoys have arrived at Hanes.
5 Everyone will be put to shame because of a people who are useless to them, who bring no help or benefit, only shame and disgrace."
6 The oracle about the animals of the Negev. Through a land of hardship and distress, home of lioness and lion, of viper and flying fiery serpent, they carry their wealth on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people who can be of no use to them.
7 Egypt's help is useless and empty; that is why I have named her "Rahab who sits still."
8 Now go and write it on a tablet in their presence and record it in a scroll, so that it may stand for days to come, for all time and forever.
9 For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the law of the LORD.
10 They say to the seers, "Stop seeing!" and to the visionaries, "Do not show us visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things; give us visions of fantasies.
11 Get out of the way, turn off the path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!"
12 So this is what the Holy One of Israel says: "Since you reject this word and rely on oppression and deceit and lean on them,
13 this iniquity will be for you like a crack in a high wall, bulging out and ready to fall, which crashes down suddenly, all at once.
14 It will shatter like a potter's jar, smashed so ruthlessly that not one fragment will be left among its pieces big enough to scoop embers from the hearth or dip water from a cistern."
15 This is what the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In turning back and resting you will be saved; in quietness and trust lies your strength." But you would not have it.
16 You said, "No, we will escape on horses." So you will escape! "We will ride off on fast horses." So your pursuers will be fast!
17 A thousand of you will run at the threat of one; at the threat of five all of you will run, until you are left like a pole on top of a mountain, like a banner on a hill.
18 That is why the LORD waits to be gracious to you; that is why he rises up to have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all who wait for him.
19 For a people will live in Zion, in Jerusalem; you will weep no more. He will surely show you grace at the sound of your cry; the moment he hears it, he will answer you.
20 Though the Lord gives you bread of hardship and water of oppression, your Teacher will no longer hide away; your own eyes will see your Teacher.
21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way; walk in it."
22 Then you will treat as unclean your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a stained cloth and say to them, "Away with you!"
23 He will send rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food the ground produces will be rich and abundant. On that day your cattle will graze in wide pastures.
24 The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat salted fodder, winnowed with shovel and fork.
25 On every high mountain and every towering hill streams of water will flow, on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
26 The moonlight will be as bright as sunlight, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, on the day the LORD bandages his people's fractures and heals the wounds he inflicted.
27 Look, the name of the LORD is coming from far away, blazing with anger, with thick clouds of smoke rising; his lips are full of fury, his tongue like a consuming fire.
28 His breath is like a flooding river that rises up to the neck, to shake the nations in the sieve of destruction and put in the jaws of the peoples a bit that leads them astray.
29 You will sing as on the night when a holy festival is celebrated, and your hearts will be glad as when people go up with flutes to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.
30 The LORD will make his majestic voice heard and show his arm coming down in raging anger, in the flame of a consuming fire, with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.
31 The voice of the LORD will shatter Assyria; he will strike with the rod.
32 Every blow of the punishing rod that the LORD brings down on him will be accompanied by tambourines and harps, as he fights against them in battle with his arm swinging.
33 For Topheth was prepared long ago; it has been made ready for the king. Its pit has been made deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.