| 1 Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars! |
| 2 Wail, you cypress trees, for the cedars are fallen, the mighty have been despoiled. Wail, you oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest is cut down! |
| 3 Hark! the wailing of the shepherds, their glory has been ruined. Hark! the roaring of the young lions, the jungle of the Jordan is laid waste. |
| 4 Thus said the LORD, my God: Shepherd the flock to be slaughtered. |
| 5 For they who buy them slay them with impunity; while those who sell them say, "Blessed be the LORD, I have become rich!" Even their own shepherds do not feel for them. |
| 6 (Nor shall I spare the inhabitants of the earth any more, says the LORD. Yes, I will deliver each of them into the power of his neighbor, or into the power of his king; they shall crush the earth, and I will not deliver it out of their power.) |
| 7 So I became the shepherd of the flock to be slaughtered for the sheep merchants. I took two staffs, one of which I called "Favor," and the other, "Bonds," and I fed the flock. |
| 8 In a single month I did away with the three shepherds. I wearied of them, and they behaved badly toward me. |
| 9 "I will not feed you," I said. "What is to die, let it die; what is to perish, let it perish, and let those that are left devour one another's flesh." |
| 10 Then I took my staff "Favor" and snapped it asunder, breaking off the covenant which I had made with all peoples; |
| 11 that day it was broken off. The sheep merchants who were watching me understood that this was the word of the LORD. |
| 12 I said to them, "If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, let it go." And they counted out my wages, thirty pieces of silver. |
| 13 But the LORD said to me, "Throw it in the treasury, the handsome price at which they valued me." So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the treasury in the house of the LORD. |
| 14 Then I snapped asunder my other staff, "Bonds," breaking off the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. |
| 15 The LORD said to me: This time take the gear of a foolish shepherd. |
| 16 For I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will take no note of those that perish, nor seek the strays, nor heal the injured, nor feed what survives--he will eat the flesh of the fat ones and tear off their hoofs! |
| 17 Woe to my foolish shepherd who forsakes the flock! May the sword fall upon his arm and upon his right eye; Let his arm wither away entirely, and his right eye be blind forever! |