The Flock Doomed to Slaughter

¹Open your doors, kO Lebanon,

that the fire may devour your cedars!

²Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen,

for the glorious trees are ruined!

Wail, koaks of Bashan,

for the thick forest has been felled!

³The sound of lthe wail of lthe shepherds,

for their glory is ruined!

The sound of the roar of mthe lions,

nfor the thicket of the Jordan is ruined!

⁴Thus said the Lord my God: o“Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. ⁵pThose who buy them slaughter them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, qI have become rich,’ and their own shepherds have no pity on them. ⁶For rI will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, declares the Lord. Behold, I will cause each of them to fall into the hand of his neighbor, and each into the hand of his king, and they shall crush the land, and I will deliver none from their hand.”

⁷sSo I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders. And I took two staffs, one I named uFavor, the other I named vUnion. sAnd I tended the sheep. ⁸In one month wI destroyed the three shepherds. But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me. ⁹So I said, “I will not be your shepherd. xWhat is to die, let it die. What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. And let those who are left devour the flesh of one another.” ¹⁰And I took ymy staff Favor, and I broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples. ¹¹So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep traders, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. ¹²Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages zthirty pieces of silver. ¹³Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—athe lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the zthirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter. ¹⁴Then I broke bmy second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

¹⁵Then the Lord said to me, “Take once more the equipment of ca foolish shepherd. ¹⁶For behold, I am raising up in the land a shepherd dwho does not care for those being destroyed, or seek the young or heal the maimed or nourish the healthy, but edevours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.

¹⁷f“Woe to my worthless shepherd,

gwho deserts the flock!

May the sword strike his arm

and hhis right eye!

Let his arm be wholly withered,

his right eye utterly blinded!”