1. Lebanon, open your gates!Let the fire come into destroy your cedar trees.
2. Cry, you cypress trees!The glorious cedars have fallenand are rotting.Cry, you oak trees of Bashan!The dense foresthas been chopped down.
3. Listen! Shepherds are crying.Their glorious pastureshave been ruined.Listen! Lions are roaring.The forests of the Jordan Valleyare no more to be found.
4. The Lord my God said to me:Tend those sheep doomed for slaughter!
5. The people who buy and butcher them go unpunished, while everyone who sells them says, “Praise the Lord! I'm rich.” Not even their shepherds have pity on them.
6. Tend those sheep because I, the Lord, will no longer have pity on the people of this earth. I'll turn neighbour against neighbour and make them slaves of a king. They will bring disaster on the earth, and I'll do nothing to rescue any of them.
7. So I became a shepherd of those sheep doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep dealers. And I gave names to the two sticks I used for tending the sheep: one of them was named “Mercy” and the other “Unity”.
8. In less than a month, I became impatient with three shepherds who didn't like me, and I got rid of them.
9. Then I said, “I refuse to be your shepherd. Let the sheep that are going to die, go on and die, and those that are going to be destroyed, go on and be destroyed. Then let the others eat one another alive.”