9. My head is reeling,my limbs are limp,I’m staggering like a drunk,seeing double from too much wine—And all because of God,because of his holy words.
10-12. Now for what God says regarding the lying prophets:“Can you believe it? A country teeming with adulterers!faithless, promiscuous idolater-adulterers!They’re a curse on the land.The land’s a wasteland.Their unfaithfulnessis turning the country into a cesspool,Prophets and priests devoted to desecration.They have nothing to do with me as their God.My very own Temple, mind you—mud-spattered with their crimes.” God’s Decree.“But they won’t get by with it.They’ll find themselves on a slippery slope,Careening into the darkness,somersaulting into the pitch-black dark.I’ll make them pay for their crimes.It will be the Year of Doom.” God’s Decree.
13-14. “Over in Samaria I saw prophetsacting like silly fools—shocking!They preached using that no-god Baal for a text,messing with the minds of my people.And the Jerusalem prophets are even worse—horrible!—sex-driven, living a lie,Subsidizing a culture of wickedness,and never giving it a second thought.They’re as bad as those wretches in old Sodom,the degenerates of old Gomorrah.”
15. So here’s the Message to the prophets from God-of-the-Angel-Armies:“I’ll cook them a supper of maggoty meatwith after-dinner drinks of strychnine.The Jerusalem prophets are behind all this.They’re the cause of the godlessness polluting this country.”
16-17. A Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies:“Don’t listen to the sermons of the prophets.It’s all hot air. Lies, lies, and more lies.They make it all up.Not a word they speak comes from me.They preach their ‘Everything Will Turn Out Fine’ sermonto congregations with no taste for God,Their ‘Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen to You’ sermonto people who are set in their own ways.
18-20. “Have any of these prophets bothered to meet with me, the true God?bothered to take in what I have to say?listened to and then lived out my Word?Look out! God’s hurricane will be let loose—my hurricane blast,Spinning the heads of the wicked like tops!God’s raging anger won’t let upUntil I’ve made a clean sweep,completing the job I began.When the job’s done,you’ll see that it’s been well done.
21-22. “I never sent these prophets,but they ran anyway.I never spoke to them,but they preached away.If they’d have bothered to sit down and meet with me,they’d have preached my Message to my people.They’d have gotten them back on the right track,gotten them out of their evil ruts.
23-24. “Am I not a God near at hand”—God’s Decree—“and not a God far off?Can anyone hide out in a cornerwhere I can’t see him?”God’s Decree.“Am I not present everywhere,whether seen or unseen?”God’s Decree.
25-27. “I know what they’re saying, all these prophets who preach lies using me as their text, saying ‘I had this dream! I had this dream!’ How long do I have to put up with this? Do these prophets give two cents about me as they preach their lies and spew out their grandiose delusions? They swap dreams with one another, feed on each other’s delusive dreams, trying to distract my people from me just as their ancestors were distracted by the no-god Baal.
28-29. “You prophets who do nothing but dream—go ahead and tell your silly dreams.But you prophets who have a message from me—tell it truly and faithfully.What does straw have in common with wheat?Nothing else is like God’s Decree.Isn’t my Message like fire?” God’s Decree.“Isn’t it like a sledgehammer busting a rock?
30-31. “I’ve had it with the ‘prophets’ who get all their sermons secondhand from each other. Yes, I’ve had it with them. They make up stuff and then pretend it’s a real sermon.