Is there anything which might have been done for my vine-garden which I have not done? why then, when I was hoping for the best grapes did it give me common grapes?

Will the axe say high-sounding words against him who is using it, or the blade be full of pride against him who is cutting with it? As if a rod had the power of shaking him who is using it, or as if a stick might take up him who is not wood.

Has it not come to your ears how I did it long before, purposing it in times long past? Now I have given effect to my design, so that by you strong towns might be turned into masses of broken walls.

So the metal-worker put heart into the gold-worker, and he who was hammering the metal smooth said kind words to the iron-worker, saying of the plate, It is ready: and he put it together with nails, so that there might be no slipping.

And I saw that there was no man, even no wise man among them, who might give an answer to my questions.

For this reason I made it clear to you in the past, before it came I gave you word of it: for fear that you might say, My god did these things, and my pictured and metal images made them come about.

They have only now been effected, and not in the past: and before this day they had not come to your ears; for fear that you might say, I had knowledge of them.

And now, says the Lord, who made me his servant when I was still in my mother's body, so that I might make Jacob come back to him, and so that Israel might come together to him: and I was honoured in the eyes of the Lord, and my God became my strength.