This is what the Lord GOD showed me: Look! He was forming locust swarms as the latter plantings were just beginning to sprout. Indeed, the king had just taken his first fruit tax.

This is what the Lord says: "Just as a shepherd salvages from the lion's mouth a couple of leg bones or a piece of an ear, so the Israelites who live in Samaria will be salvaged. They will be left with just a corner of a bed, and a part of a couch."

For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations, just as [grain] is sifted in a sieve, yet the least kernel shall not fall upon the earth.

For I know how manifold are your transgressions and your sins mighty: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the right of the needy in the gate.

Seek good and not evil so you can live! Then the Lord, the God who commands armies, just might be with you, as you claim he is.

Thus says the Lord,
“For three transgressions of Israel and for four (multiplied delinquencies)
I will not reverse its punishment or revoke My word concerning it,
Because they sell the righteous and innocent for silver
And the needy for the price of a pair of sandals.

"You Israelites are just like the Ethiopians in my sight," says the Lord. "Certainly I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but I also brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.