This is what the Lord says: "Because Damascus has committed three crimes -- make that four! -- I will not revoke my decree of judgment. They ripped through Gilead like threshing sledges with iron teeth.

Yet it was, I, who destroyed the Amorite, from before them, whose height was, like the height of cedars, and, strong, was he, like the oaks, - but I destroyed his fruit above, and his roots beneath.

Look! I will press you down, like a cart loaded down with grain presses down.

Thus saith Jehovah: Like as the shepherd rescueth out of the jaw of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the children of Israel be rescued that sit in Samaria in the corner of a couch, and upon the damask of a bed.

“Offer [by burning] a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened,
And [boastfully] proclaim freewill offerings, announce them.
For this you so love to do, O children of Israel!”
Says the Lord God.

"I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. I killed your young men with the sword, along with the horses you had captured. I made the stench from the corpses rise up into your nostrils. Still you did not come back to me." The Lord is speaking!

I have overturned among you, Like the overturn by God of Sodom and Gomorrah, And ye are as a brand delivered from a burning, And ye have not turned back unto Me, An affirmation of Jehovah.

Seek Jehovah, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel.

It is he who is raining sudden destruction upon the strong like lightning, so that ruin comes upon the fortress.

It will be like a man who runs from a lion, only to encounter a bear; or who comes home, leans his hand against a wall, and a serpent bites him!

But let, justice, roll along like water, - and, righteousness, as a torrent over flowing.

Who are taking part according to the psaltery, Like David they invented for themselves instruments of music;

For this doth not the land tremble, And mourned hath every dweller in it? And come up as a flood hath all of it. And it hath been cast out, and hath sunk, Like the flood of Egypt.

So will I turn your festivals into mourning, and all your songs into a dirge, and I will bring up - on all loins - sackcloth, and upon every head - baldness, - and I will make it like the mourning for an only one, even the afterpart thereof, as a day of bitterness.

And the Lord Jehovah of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it melteth, and all that dwell therein shall mourn; and it shall wholly rise up like the Nile, and sink down as the river of Egypt.

Like the sons of the Ethiopians, are not ye, unto me, O sons of Israel? Demandeth Yahweh: Was it not, Israel, I brought up out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines out of Caphtor, and the Syrians out of Kir?

For behold, I command, and I will shake the house of Israel to and fro among all the nations, like as one shaketh corn in a sieve; yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.

"In that day I will rebuild the collapsing hut of David. I will seal its gaps, repair its ruins, and restore it to what it was like in days gone by.