17. And I will make judgment the line, and righteousness the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.
18. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.
19. As often as it passeth through, it shall take you; for morning by morning shall it pass through, by day and by night: and it shall be nought but terror to understand the message.
20. For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.
21. For the Lord shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon; that he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to pass his act, his strange act.
22. Now therefore be ye not scorners, lest your bands be made strong: for a consummation, and that determined, have I heard from the Lord, the Lord of hosts, upon the whole earth.
23. Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.
24. Doth the plowman plow continually to sow? doth he continually open and break the clods of his ground?
25. When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and put in the wheat in rows and the barley in the appointed place and the spelt in the border thereof?
26. For his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him.
27. For the fitches are not threshed with a sharp threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
28. Bread corn is ground; for he will not ever be threshing it: and though the wheel of his cart and his horses scatter it, he doth not grind it.
29. This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom.