1 Throw open your doors, Lebanon, so fire can eat up your cedars!
2 Howl, you cypress, for the cedar is down, the mighty trees are wrecked! Howl, you oaks of Bashan, for the dense forest has been cut down!
3 Hear the shepherds howling, because their splendor is wrecked! Hear the young lions roaring, because the thickets of the Jordan are laid waste!
4 This is what the LORD my God said: Tend the sheep that are destined for slaughter,
5 whose buyers kill them and suffer no penalty, whose sellers say, "Praise the LORD, I am rich!" and whose own shepherds feel no pity for them.
6 I will no longer spare the people of the land, declares the LORD. I am going to hand everyone over to his neighbor and to his king; they will beat the land to pieces, and I will rescue no one from their power.
7 So I tended the sheep destined for slaughter, truly the most afflicted of the flock. I took two staffs, calling one Favor and the other Union, and I tended the sheep.
8 Within a single month I got rid of the three shepherds. I lost patience with them, and they for their part loathed me.
9 Then I said, "I will not tend you any longer. Let the dying die and the perishing perish, and let those left over eat one another's flesh."
10 I picked up my staff called Favor and snapped it in two, breaking the covenant I had made with all the peoples.
11 It was broken that very day, and so the most afflicted of the flock, who were watching me, understood that this was the word of the LORD.
12 I told them, "If you think it right, pay me my wages; if not, don't." So they weighed out my wages: thirty pieces of silver.
13 Then the LORD told me, "Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which they valued me!" So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD.
14 Next I snapped my second staff, Union, breaking the bond of brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
15 And the LORD said to me, "Pick up again the gear of a foolish shepherd.
16 For I am about to set up a shepherd over the land who will not look after the perishing, will not search for the strays, will not heal the injured or feed the sound, but will eat the meat of the fattest and rip off their hooves.
17 Woe to the worthless shepherd who abandons the flock! A sword on his arm and on his right eye! May his arm shrivel up entirely and his right eye go completely dark!"