Two woes (Hey)
Hey, people adding house to house,
who join field to field,
Until there’s no room,
and you’re made to live alone in the middle of the country.
In my ears Yahweh of Armies [has said]:
If many houses do not become desolation,
big and good ones without inhabitant . . .
Because ten acres of vineyard will make five gallons.
Ten barrels of seed will make a barrel.
Hey, people who start early in the morning
so they can chase liquor,
Stay late in the dusk
so wine can inflame them.
There’ll be guitar and mandolin,
tambourine and pipe and wine at their banquets.
But Yahweh’s deed they don’t look to,
the action of his hands they haven’t watched.
Two therefores
Therefore my people are going into exile
because of not acknowledging.
Its splendour – hungry people,
its horde – parched with thirst.
Therefore She’ol has broadened its appetite,
opened its mouth without limit.
Its magnificence will go down,
its horde and its din and the one who exults in it.
Human beings bow down, individuals fall down,
the eyes of the lofty fall down.
And Yahweh of Armies is lofty in exercising authority;
the sacred God shows himself sacred in faithfulness.
Lambs will pasture as in their meadow,
aliens will eat the fatlings’ wastes.
Four woes (Hey)
Hey, people who haul waywardness
with cords of emptiness,
and wrongdoing as with cart ropes,
Who say, ‘He should hurry,
he should speed up his action, in order that we may see.
It should draw near and come about,
the counsel of Yisra’el’s sacred one, so we may acknowledge.’
Hey, people who say about what is bad, ‘Good’,
and about what is good, ‘Bad’,
Who make darkness into light,
and light into darkness,
Who make bitter into sweet,
and sweet into bitter.
Hey, people who are smart in their eyes,
who in their view are understanding.
Hey, strong men at drinking wine,
forceful people at mixing a drink,
Who declare a faithless person to be in the right
in return for a bribe,
And the faithfulness of the faithful people
they remove from them.
Two therefores
Therefore: like the consuming of straw in a tongue of fire,
when hay sinks down in the flame,
Their root will become veritable rot,
and their blossom will go up like dust,
Because they’ve rejected the instruction of Yahweh of Armies,
spurned the word of Yisra’el’s sacred one.
Therefore Yahweh’s anger flared against his people;
he stretched out his hand against it and struck it down.
Mountains shook, and their corpses became
like refuse in the middle of the streets.
For all this his anger did not turn back;
his hand was still stretched out.
He will lift a signal to the nations from afar,
he will whistle to one from the end of the earth,
and there – with speed, quick, it will come.
There’s none weary, there’s none collapsing, in it;
it doesn’t slumber, it doesn’t sleep.
The belt on its waist doesn’t come loose,
the thong on its boots doesn’t break.
Its arrows are sharpened,
all its bows are directed.
Its horses’ hoofs are thought of like flint,
its wheels like a whirlwind.
Its roar is like a cougar’s;
it roars like lions.
It growls and seizes prey,
and carries it off and there’s no one rescuing.
It will growl over it on that day, like the growling of the sea;
and he will look to the land,
And there, darkness, pressure,
and the light will have gone dark with its thunderclouds.
Goldingay, John; . The Bible for Everyone . SPCK. Kindle Edition.
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art –
Thou my best thought, by day or by night;
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.