Give ear to this, you old men, and take note, you people of the land. Has this ever been in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

For a nation has come up over my land, strong and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the back teeth of a great lion.

The fields are wasted, the land has become dry; for the grain is wasted, the new wine is kept back, the oil is poor.

Let a time be fixed for going without food, have a holy meeting, let the old men, even all the people of the land, come together to the house of the Lord your God, crying out to the Lord.

Let the horn be sounded in Zion, and a war-cry in my holy mountain; let all the people of the land be troubled: for the day of the Lord is coming;

Before them fire sends destruction, and after them flame is burning: the land is like the garden of Eden before them, and after them an unpeopled waste; truly, nothing has been kept safe from them.

Then the Lord had a care for the honour of his land and had pity on his people.

I will send the one from the north far away from you, driving him into a dry and waste land, with his front to the sea of the east and his back to the sea of the west, and the smell of him will go up, even his evil smell will go up.

Have no fear, O land; be glad with great joy; for the Lord has done great things.

I will get together all the nations, and make them come down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and there I will take up with them the cause of my people and of my heritage Israel, whom they have sent wandering among the nations, and of my land which has been parted by them.

And the children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem you have given for a price to the sons of the Greeks, to send them far away from their land:

Egypt will be a waste and Edom a land of destruction, because of the evil done to the children of Judah, because they have let blood be drained out in their land without cause.