Therefore, this is what the Lord says:
I am going to place stumbling blocks before these people;
fathers and sons together will stumble over them;
friends and neighbors will also perish.

If you have raced with runners
and they have worn you out,
how can you compete with horses?
If you stumble in a peaceful land,
what will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?

Give glory to the Lord your God
before He brings darkness,
before your feet stumble
on the mountains at dusk.
You wait for light,
but He brings darkest gloom
and makes thick darkness.

Yet My people have forgotten Me.
They burn incense to false idols
that make them stumble in their ways
on the ancient roads
and walk on new paths, not the highway.

But You, Lord, know
all their deadly plots against me.
Do not wipe out their guilt;
do not blot out their sin before You.
Let them be forced to stumble before You;
deal with them in the time of Your anger.

But the Lord is with me like a violent warrior.
Therefore, my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.
Since they have not succeeded, they will be utterly shamed,
an everlasting humiliation that will never be forgotten.

They will come weeping,
but I will bring them back with consolation.
I will lead them to wadis filled with water
by a smooth way where they will not stumble,
for I am Israel’s Father,
and Ephraim is My firstborn.

The swift cannot flee,
and the warrior cannot escape!
In the north by the bank of the Euphrates River,
they stumble and fall.

The nations have heard of your dishonor,
and your outcry fills the earth,
because warrior stumbles against warrior
and together both of them have fallen.

He continues to stumble.
Indeed, each falls over the other.
They say, “Get up! Let’s return to our people
and to the land of our birth,
away from the sword that oppresses.”

The arrogant will stumble and fall
with no one to pick him up.
I will set fire to his cities,
and it will consume everything around him.”