I hate, I despise your feasts!
I can’t stand the stench
of your solemn assemblies.

Woe to you who long for the Day of the Lord!
What will the Day of the Lord be for you?
It will be darkness and not light.

But let justice flow like water,
and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.

Those who turn justice into wormwood
throw righteousness to the ground.

He brings destruction on the strong,
and it falls on the stronghold.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor
and exact a grain tax from him,
you will never live in the houses of cut stone
you have built;
you will never drink the wine
from the lush vineyards
you have planted.

Listen to this message that I am singing for you, a lament, house of Israel:

For I know your crimes are many
and your sins innumerable.
They oppress the righteous, take a bribe,
and deprive the poor of justice at the gates.

Therefore Yahweh, the God of Hosts, the Lord, says:

There will be wailing in all the public squares;
they will cry out in anguish in all the streets.
The farmer will be called on to mourn,
and professional mourners to wail.

There will be wailing in all the vineyards,
for I will pass among you.
The Lord has spoken.

Therefore, the wise person will keep silent
at such a time,
for the days are evil.

“House of Israel, was it sacrifices and grain offerings that you presented to Me during the 40 years in the wilderness?

For the Lord says to the house of Israel:

Seek Me and live!

Take away from Me the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.

Do not seek Bethel
or go to Gilgal
or journey to Beer-sheba,
for Gilgal will certainly go into exile,
and Bethel will come to nothing.

It will be like a man who flees from a lion
only to have a bear confront him.
He goes home and rests his hand against the wall
only to have a snake bite him.

She has fallen;
Virgin Israel will never rise again.
She lies abandoned on her land,
with no one to raise her up.

Won’t the Day of the Lord
be darkness rather than light,
even gloom without any brightness in it?

Even if you offer Me
your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
I will have no regard
for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle.

For the Lord God says:

The city that marches out a thousand strong
will have only a hundred left,
and the one that marches out a hundred strong
will have only ten left in the house of Israel.

So I will send you into exile beyond Damascus.” Yahweh, the God of Hosts, is His name. He has spoken.

The One who made the Pleiades and Orion,
who turns darkness into dawn
and darkens day into night,
who summons the waters of the sea
and pours them out over the face of the earth—
Yahweh is His name.

But you have taken up Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your star god, images you have made for yourselves.

They hate the one who convicts the guilty
at the city gate
and despise the one who speaks with integrity.

Seek good and not evil
so that you may live,
and the Lord, the God of Hosts,
will be with you,
as you have claimed.

Hate evil and love good;
establish justice in the gate.
Perhaps the Lord, the God of Hosts, will be gracious
to the remnant of Joseph.

Seek Yahweh and live,
or He will spread like fire
throughout the house of Joseph;
it will consume everything,
with no one at Bethel to extinguish it.