And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.

And the Lord GOD of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.

Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?

Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD.

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

All the sinners among my people will die by the sword -- the ones who say, 'Disaster will not come near, it will not confront us.'

In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old:

"Look, days are coming," {declares} Yahweh, "when [the one who] plows will overtake [the one who] reaps, the one who treads grapes [will catch up] with the one who sows the seed. And the mountains will drip sweet wine and all of the hills will flow [with it].

And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.

And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.

The vision of Obadiah.

This is what the Lord God has said about Edom:

We have heard a message from the Lord;
a messenger has been sent among the nations:
“Rise up, and let us go to war against her.”

But though thou wentest up as high as the Eagle, and madest thy nest above among the stars: yet would I pluck thee down from thence.

"If thieves came to you, if plunderers of [the] night--How you have been destroyed!--would they not steal {what they wanted}? If grape gatherers came, would they not leave gleanings?

How are the things of Esau searched out! how are his hidden things sought up!

All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even to the border: the men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee; they that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee: there is none understanding in him.

Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?

So shall thy mighty men, O Teman, be dismayed, - to the intent that every man, may be cut off, out of Mount Esau, by slaughter.

and that because of the time when thou didst set thyself against him; even when the enemies carried away his host, and when the aliens came in at his ports, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, and thou thyself wast as one of them.

But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day of his disaster; neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction; nor have opened wide thy mouth in the day of distress.

You should not have entered the gate of my people on the day of their disaster. You also should not have gloated over his misery on the day of his disaster, and you should not have stretched out [your hands] on the day of his disaster.

“Do not stand at the crossroad
To cut down those [of Judah] who escaped;
And do not hand over [to the enemy] those [of Judah] who survive
In the day of their distress.

For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head.

“Because just as you [Edom] drank on My holy mountain [desecrating it in the revelry of the destroyers],
So shall all the nations drink continually [one by one, of My wrath];
Yes, they shall drink and swallow [the full measure of punishment]
And become as though they had never existed.

But in mount Zion there shall be those that escape, and it shall be holy; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.

And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken it.

They of the South shall have the mount of Esau in possession. And look: what lieth upon the ground, that shall the Philistines have. The plain fields shall Ephraim and Samaria possess: and the mountains of Gilead shall Benjamin have.

and the captives of this host of the children of Israel shall possess what belonged to the Canaanites, unto Zarephath; and the captives of Jerusalem, who were in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the south.

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.

Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.

So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.

“Come on!” the sailors said to each other. “Let’s cast lots. Then we’ll know who is to blame for this trouble we’re in.” So they cast lots, and the lot singled out Jonah.

Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?

Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, What is this that thou hast done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Jehovah, because he had told them.

Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous.

Jonah said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.

Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said, We beseech thee, O LORD, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O LORD, hast done as it pleased thee.

And they lifted Jonah up and threw him out into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging.

Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,

And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

Compassed me have waters unto the soul, The deep doth compass me, The weed is bound to my head.

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

When my life was ebbing away, I called out to the Lord, and my prayer came to your holy temple.

But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you; I will fulfill what I have vowed. Deliverance [belongs] to Yahweh!"

And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh to do what the LORD had ordered.

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

seeing the word doth come unto the king of Nineveh, and he riseth from his throne, and removeth his honourable robe from off him, and spreadeth out sackcloth, and sitteth on the ashes,

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

Furthermore, both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from the violence he is doing.

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.

And Yahweh said, "{Is it right for you to be angry}?"

So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.

And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.

But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.

And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.

So God said to Jonah, "{Is it right for you to be angry} about the plant?" And he said, "{It is right for me to be angry enough to die}!"

Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:

Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 [innocent] persons, who do not know the difference between their right and left hand [and are not yet accountable for sin], as well as many [blameless] animals?”

The word of the Lord that came to Micah the Moreshite—what he saw regarding Samaria and Jerusalem in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Hear, O peoples, all of you;
Listen closely, O earth and all that is in it,
And let the Lord God be witness [giving a testimony of the judgment] against you,
The Lord from His holy temple [in the heavens].

For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.

Then shall the mountains be melted beneath him, and, the valleys, be cleft, - as wax before the fire, as waters poured out in a steep place.

For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?

And I have set Samaria for a heap of the field, For plantations of a vineyard, And poured out into a valley her stones, And her foundations I uncover.

And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.

"Therefore I will cry out and grieve loudly; I will walk around stripped and naked. I will cry out like a jackal and mourn like a company of ostriches.

For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.

Declare ye it not at Gath, weep ye not at all: in the house of Aphrah roll thyself in the dust.

Pass over for thee, O inhabitant of Shaphir, Naked one of shame. Not gone out hath the inhabitant of Zaanan, The lamentation of Beth-Ezel doth take from you its standing.

For the inhabitant of Maroth (Bitterness)
Writhes in pain [at its losses] and waits anxiously for good,
Because a catastrophe has come down from the Lord
To the gate of Jerusalem.

Harness the chariot to the team of horses, O inhabitants of Lachish; it [is] the beginning of sin for the daughter of Zion, for the transgressions of Israel were found in you.

Yet will I bring an heir unto thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah: he shall come unto Adullam the glory of Israel.

Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand.

When they covet to have land, they take it by violence; they rob men of their houses. Thus they oppress a man for his house, and every man for his heritage.

Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Behold, against this family do I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks, neither shall ye walk haughtily; for it is an evil time.

In that day shall one take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, and say, We be utterly spoiled: he hath changed the portion of my people: how hath he removed it from me! turning away he hath divided our fields.

Ye do not prophesy -- they do prophesy, They do not prophesy to these, It doth not remove shame.

Shall it be said, O house of Jacob, Is the Spirit of Jehovah straitened? are these his doings? Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?

As for you, you have become haters of those who were at peace with you: you take the clothing of those who go by without fear, and make them prisoners of war.

The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses; from their children have ye taken away my glory for ever.

Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.

“If a man walking after wind and falsehood
Had told lies and said,
‘I will speak out to you concerning wine and liquor,’
He would be spokesman to this people.

I do surely gather thee, O Jacob, all of thee, I surely bring together the remnant of Israel, Together I do set it as the flock of Bozrah, As a drove in the midst of its pasture, It maketh a noise because of man.

The breaker is come up before them: they have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall pass before them, and the LORD on the head of them.

And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment?

yet you hate what is good, and love what is evil. You flay my people's skin and rip the flesh from their bones.

Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.

Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings.

This is what the Lord says
concerning the prophets
who lead my people astray,
who proclaim peace
when they have food to sink their teeth into
but declare war against the one
who puts nothing in their mouths.

Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.

And the seers will be shamed, and the readers of the future will be at a loss, all of them covering their lips; for there is no answer from God.