2. Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth!For the Lord has spoken:‘I reared children and brought them up,but they have rebelled against me.
3. The ox knows its master,the donkey its owner’s manger,but Israel does not know,my people do not understand.’
4. Woe to the sinful nation,a people whose guilt is great,a brood of evildoers,children given to corruption!They have forsaken the Lord;they have spurned the Holy One of Israeland turned their backs on him.
5. Why should you be beaten any more?Why do you persist in rebellion?Your whole head is injured,your whole heart afflicted.
6. From the sole of your foot to the top of your headthere is no soundness –only wounds and bruisesand open sores,not cleansed or bandagedor soothed with oil.
7. Your country is desolate,your cities burned with fire;your fields are being stripped by foreignersright before you,laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.
8. Daughter Zion is leftlike a shelter in a vineyard,like a hut in a cucumber field,like a city under siege.
9. Unless the Lord Almightyhad left us some survivors,we would have become like Sodom,we would have been like Gomorrah.
10. Hear the word of the Lord,you rulers of Sodom;listen to the instruction of our God,you people of Gomorrah!
11. ‘The multitude of your sacrifices –what are they to me?’ says the Lord.‘I have more than enough of burnt offerings,of rams and the fat of fattened animals;I have no pleasurein the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.