For Israel's sake I destroyed the Amorites. They were as tall as cedars and as strong as oaks, but I destroyed the fruit on their branches and their roots in the ground.

"But you made the Nazirites drink wine; you commanded the prophets, 'Do not prophesy!'

"But surely I gave you no food to eat in any of your cities; you lacked food everywhere you live. Still you did not come back to me." The Lord is speaking!

"I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. I gave rain to one city, but not to another. One field would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.

People from two or three cities staggered into one city to get water, but remained thirsty. Still you did not come back to me." The Lord is speaking!

(But there is one who made the constellations Pleiades and Orion; he can turn the darkness into morning and daylight into night. He summons the water of the seas and pours it out on the earth's surface. The Lord is his name!

You refuse to believe a day of disaster will come, but you establish a reign of violence.

Be certain of this, the time is coming," says the sovereign Lord, "when I will send a famine through the land -- not a shortage of food or water but an end to divine revelation!

People will stagger from sea to sea, and from the north around to the east. They will wander about looking for a revelation from the Lord, but they will not find any.

These are the ones who now take oaths in the name of the sinful idol goddess of Samaria. They vow, 'As surely as your god lives, O Dan,' or 'As surely as your beloved one lives, O Beer Sheba!' But they will fall down and not get up again."

"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.

Look, the sovereign Lord is watching the sinful nation, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth. But I will not completely destroy the family of Jacob," says the Lord.