12. ‘The time has come, and the day has arrived. ‘Let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is on all its crowd.
13. ‘For the seller shall not return to what has been sold, though they are still alive. For the vision is for all its crowd – it shall not turn back. And because of his crookedness no one holds fast to his life.
14. ‘They have blown the trumpet and all is prepared, but no one goes to battle, for My wrath is on all its crowd.
15. ‘The sword is outside, and the pestilence and the scarcity of food inside. He who is in the field dies by the sword, and he who is in a city, scarcity of food and pestilence devour him,
16. while they who escape of them shall escape and be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, each for his crookedness.
17. ‘All hands go limp, and all knees become as water.
18. ‘And they shall gird on sackcloth, and be covered with trembling. And shame shall be on every face, and baldness on all their heads.
19. ‘They throw their silver into the streets, and their gold becomes as filth. Their silver and their gold is unable to deliver them in the day of the wrath of יהוה. They do not satisfy their appetite, nor fill their stomachs, because it has been their stumbling-block of crookedness.
20. ‘And the splendour of His ornaments, He set it in excellency. But they made from it the images of their abominations and their disgusting matters. Therefore I shall make it like filth to them.
21. ‘And I shall give it for a prey into the hands of strangers, and to the wrong of the earth for a spoil, and they shall profane it.
22. ‘And I shall turn My face from them. And they shall profane My secret place, for destroyers shall enter it and profane it.
23. ‘Make a chain, for the land has been filled with crimes of blood, and the city has been filled with violence.
24. ‘And I shall bring the evil ones of the gentiles, and they shall possess their houses. And I shall cause the pride of the strong to cease, and their set-apart places shall be profaned.
25. ‘Destruction shall come. And they shall seek peace, but there is none.
26. ‘Calamity upon calamity shall come, and report shall be upon report. And they shall seek a vision from a prophet. But the teaching has perished from the priest, and counsel from the elders!
27. ‘Let the sovereign mourn, and let the prince put on despair, and let the hands of the common people tremble. And I shall deal with them according to their way, and judge them with their own right-rulings. And they shall know that I am יהוה!’ ”