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.

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

"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 overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames. Still you did not come back to me." The Lord is speaking!

Seek the Lord so you can live! Otherwise he will break out like fire against Joseph's family; the fire will consume and no one will be able to quench it and save Bethel.

Justice must flow like torrents of water, righteous actions like a stream that never dries up.

They sing to the tune of stringed instruments; like David they invent musical instruments.

Because of this the earth will quake, and all who live in it will mourn. The whole earth will rise like the River Nile, it will surge upward and then grow calm, like the Nile in Egypt.

The sovereign Lord who commands armies will do this. He touches the earth and it dissolves; all who live on it mourn. The whole earth rises like the River Nile, and then grows calm like the Nile in Egypt.

"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.

"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.