Seizure of Houses and Fields

1 How terrible for those who plan violence, who lie in bed planning evil, then get up early and carry it out because they have the power! 2 They covet fields and steal them, and seize houses by force. They oppress a man and his household, a man and his inherited property.

3 So the Lord says, “I am planning disaster for this generation, a burden you will not be able to take off your necks. You will not walk upright, for it will be a time of disaster.”

4 At that time people will take up a proverb and a lament about you. In their suffering they will say, “We have been completely robbed! My people are removed from their allotted share, driven from their inheritance. Their fields are divided again and again.”

5 So you will have no one to stretch out a measuring line over an allotment in the Lord’s assembly.

Prophecy Rejected

6 “Do not prophesy! Do not teach this people, for they will not accept humiliation.”

7 Is what Jacob’s house says right? Has the Lord’s⁠a Memra been cut short? Are these His deeds? Aren’t all My words right? Everything I said I would bring, I have brought upon those who live truthfully.

8 Because of their sins My people are handed over to their enemies. Because of them nations rise and dispossess them, taking away their precious wealth. They cross their land without fear, and they return among them like people broken by war.

9 You expel My people’s congregation from their pleasant homes. Their children are taken away from them. Gone is their glory, which they said would last forever.

10 Get up and go into exile! This land is no resting place for the wicked. Because of its defilement they are destroyed, and you join together to make it unclean.

11 For they stray after false prophets, who prophesy lies to them and teach them about wine and drunkenness. As they learned to stray after false prophets, so⁠b this generation’s people will be exiled to a land of falsehood.

The Exiles Gathered

12 In the end I will gather all of you from Jacob’s house. I will bring your exiles together, the survivors of Israel. I will put them together like sheep in an enclosure, like a flock in a pen. The great number of people there will make a commotion.

13 Those who escape will go up as they did at first. A king will go up at their head, leading them.⁠c He will break the enemy who oppresses them and conquer fortified cities. They will possess the nations’ cities. Their king will lead them, and the Memra of the Lord will support them.