1. Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,look and take note!Search her squares to see if you can find a man,one who does justiceand seeks truth, that I may pardon her.
2. Though they say, “As the Lord lives,” yet they swear falsely.
3. O Lord, do not your eyes look for truth? You have struck them down,but they felt no anguish;you have consumed them,but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock;they have refused to repent.
4. Then I said, “These are only the poor;they have no sense; for they do not know the way of the Lord,the justice of their God.
5. I will go to the greatand will speak to them,for they know the way of the Lord,the justice of their God.” But they all alike had broken the yoke;they had burst the bonds.
6. Therefore a lion from the forest shall strike them down;a wolf from the desert shall devastate them. A leopard is watching their cities;everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces,because their transgressions are many,their apostasies are great.
7. “How can I pardon you?Your children have forsaken me and have sworn by those who are no gods. When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of whores.
8. They were well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.
9. Shall I not punish them for these things?declares the Lord;and shall I not avenge myselfon a nation such as this?
10. “Go up through her vine rows and destroy, but make not a full end;strip away her branches,for they are not the Lord’s.
11. For the house of Israel and the house of Judahhave been utterly treacherous to me,declares the Lord.
12. They have spoken falsely of the Lordand have said, ‘He will do nothing; no disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine.