1   Listen, Israel, to this word that the Lord has spoken against you:

   2   Do not fall into the ways of the nations,
    do not be awed by signs in the heavens;
    it is the nations who go in awe of these.
   3   For the carved images of the nations are a sham,
    they are nothing but timber cut from the forest,
    worked with his chisel by a craftsman;
   4   he adorns it with silver and gold,

False religion and its punishment
fastening them on with hammer and nails
  so that they do not fall apart.
5   They can no more speak than a scarecrow in a plot of cucumbers;
  they must be carried, for they cannot walk.
  Do not be afraid of them: they can do no harm,
    and they have no power to do good.
   6   Where can one be found like thee, O Lord?
Great thou art and great the might of thy name.
7   Who shall not fear thee, king of the nations?
    for fear is thy fitting tribute.
Where among the wisest of the nations and all their royalty
    can one be found like thee?
   8   They are fools and blockheads one and all,
  learning their nonsense from a log of wood.
9   The beaten silver is brought from Tarshish
    and the gold from Ophir; ^note
  all are the work of craftsmen and goldsmiths.
  They are draped in violet and purple,
    all the work of skilled men.
10   But the Lord is God in truth,
  a living god, an eternal king.
  The earth quakes under his wrath,
  nations cannot endure his fury.

11    ^note[You shall say this to them: The gods who did not make heaven and earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.]

   12    ^note God made the earth by his power,
  fixed the world in place by his wisdom,
  unfurled the skies by his understanding.
13   At the thunder of his voice the waters in heaven are amazed; ^note
  he brings up the mist from the ends of the earth,
  he opens rifts ^note for the rain
  and brings the wind out of his storehouses.
   14   All men are brutish and ignorant;
  every goldsmith is discredited by his idol;
  for the figures he casts are a sham,
  there is no breath in them.
   15   They are worth nothing, mere mockeries,
  which perish when their day of reckoning comes.
   16   God, Jacob's creator, is not like these;

False religion and its punishment
    for he is the maker of all.
    Israel is the people he claims as his own;
    the Lord of Hosts is his name.


   17   Put your goods together and carry them out of the country,
    living as you are under siege.
   18   For these are the words of the Lord:
    This time I will uproot
  the whole population of the land,
  and I will press them hard and squeeze them dry.


     19   O the pain of my wounds!
    Cruel are the blows I suffer.
But this is my plight, I said, and I must endure it.
20   My home is ruined, my tent-ropes all severed,
  my sons have left me and are gone,
  there is no one to pitch my tent again,
    no one to put up its curtains.
     21   The shepherds of the people are mere brutes;
    they never consult the Lord,
    and so they do not prosper,
and all their flocks at pasture are scattered.


22   Hark, a rumour comes flying,
  then a mounting uproar from the land of the north,
an army to make Judah's cities desolate, a haunt of wolves.
     23   I know, O Lord,
  that man's ways are not of his own choosing;
  nor is it for a man to determine his course in life.
   24   Correct us, ^note O Lord, but with justice, not in anger,
    lest thou bring us ^note almost to nothing.
   24   Pour out thy fury on nations
    that have not acknowledged thee,
  on tribes that have not invoked thee by name;
for they have devoured Jacob ^note and made an end of him
  and have left his home a waste.

Previous section

Next section