The Hebrew Prophets

This is why my heart throbs like a lyre for Mo'av, and everything in me for Kir-Heres.

Even when Mo'av is seen growing weary of worshipping on the high places and entering their sanctuaries to pray, they will have accomplished nothing.

This is the word ADONAI spoke against Mo'av in the past.

But now ADONAI has said, "Within three years [and not a day more], as if a hired worker were keeping track of the time, the glory of Mo'av will be brought into contempt, despite its large population; and the surviving remnant will be few and feeble."

This is a prophecy about Dammesek: "Dammesek will soon stop being a city; it will become a heap of ruins.

The cities of 'Aro'er will be abandoned, given over to flocks lying down undisturbed.

Efrayim will have no defenses, Dammesek will cease to rule, and Aram's survivors will share the fate of Isra'el's finest sons," says ADONAI-Tzva'ot.

"When that day comes, Ya'akov's glory will wane, and his full body grow thin,

as when the harvester collects the standing grain, reaping the ears of grain with his arm; yes, as when they glean the grain in the Refa'im Valley.

Yet gleanings will be left, as when beating an olive tree - two or three olives at the very top, four or five on its fruitful branches," says ADONAI, the God of Isra'el.

On that day, a person will heed his Maker and turn his eyes toward the Holy One of Isra'el.

He will pay no heed to the altars made with his own hands, he will not turn toward what his fingers made, the sacred poles and standing-stones for sun-worship.

When that day comes, his strong cities, which others abandoned when Isra'el advanced, will be like abandoned woods and forests; they will be laid waste.

For you have forgotten the God who saved you, failed to remember the Rock of your strength; so you plant pagan-style gardens and set out vine-cuttings for a foreign god.

Though you make them grow on the day you plant them, and in the morning your seedlings flower; the crop will vanish the day disease comes, a day of incurable pain.

Oh, the terror-stricken uproar of many peoples, roaring like the roar of the seas, and the rushing about of nations, rushing and surging like wild, wild waters!

Yes, the nations will roar like the mighty ocean, but he will rebuke them, and far will they flee, driven like chaff by a mountain wind, like whirling dust in advance of the storm.

As evening falls, you can see terror; before sunrise, they have ceased to be. This is the lot of those who plunder us, the fate of those who prey on us.

Woe to the land of whirring wings beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;

they send ambassadors by sea, across the water in papyrus-reed boats! Go, swift messengers, to a nation tall and bronzed, to a people feared far and near, to a strong and conquering nation whose land is divided by rivers!

All you inhabitants of the world, you who live on the earth: when a banner is hoisted on the mountains, look! When the shofar is blown, listen!

For ADONAI has said this to me: "I will look on from my place and do nothing, like heat shimmering in the sun, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest."

For before the harvest, when the flowering is over, and the bud becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the branches with pruning-knives, lop off the twigs and take them away.

They will all be left to the vultures in the mountains and to the wild animals in the fields; the vultures will feed on them in summer, and the wild animals of the fields in winter.

At that time tribute will be brought to ADONAI-Tzva'ot from a nation tall and bronzed, from a people feared far and near, from a strong and conquering nation whose land is divided by rivers, to the place where the name of ADONAI-Tzva'ot lives, Mount Tziyon.