but don't seek Bethel. Don't go to Gilgal, and don't pass over to Beer-sheba. Because Gilgal will surely go into captivity, and Bethel will come to nothing.

"Therefore, since you trample the poor continuously, taxing his grain, building houses of stone in which you won't live and planting fine vineyards from which you won't drink

"Horses don't run over bare rock, do they? One doesn't plow rock with oxen, does he? But you have turned justice to gall, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness.

"Very well then, hear this message from the LORD: "You are saying, "Don't prophesy against Israel, and don't preach against the house of Isaac."

Surely the land will tremble because of this, won't it? And all who live in it will mourn, won't they? The entire land will swell up like a flooded river. It will be stirred up and then will sink like the river of Egypt.

If a ram’s horn is blown in a city,
aren’t people afraid?
If a disaster occurs in a city,
hasn’t the Lord done it?

"I also have scheduled food shortages for you in all of your cities, and lack of bread in all of your settlements, but you haven't returned to me," declares the LORD.

You rejoice in nothing worth mentioning that is, you keep on saying, "We captured Karnaim by our own strength of will and by our own effort, didn't we?'

Don't prophesy anymore at Bethel, because it's the king's sanctuary and a temple of the kingdom."

People will stagger from sea to sea, from north to east. They will run back and forth, searching for a message from the LORD, but they won't find it.

"Aren't you people of Israel like the people of Cush to me?" declares the LORD. "I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, did I not, as well as the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?

Don't you realize the Lord's day of judgment will bring darkness, not light -- gloomy blackness, not bright light?

Take away from me your noisy songs; I don't want to hear the music of your stringed instruments.