1Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria. You crush the poor and grind down the needy. You say to your masters, "Bring more, and let us drink."
2The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness: "Look, the days are coming upon you when he will take you away with hooks, and the last of you with fishhooks."
3"You will go out through the broken walls, each cow straight ahead of her, and you will be cast into the palace," says the LORD.
4"Come to Bethel, and sin. At Gilgal sin more and more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes every three years."
5"Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven in it. Announce your free offerings to everyone. For this is what pleases you, people of Israel," says the Lord GOD.
6"I gave you clean teeth in all your cities, and no bread in all your places. Yet you have not returned to me," says the LORD.
7"I also held back the rain from you, when there were still three months until the harvest. I sent rain on one city, and sent no rain on another city. One field was rained on, and the field that had no rain dried up."
8"So people from two or three cities went wandering to one city to drink water, but they had not enough. Yet you have not returned to me," says the LORD.
9"I struck you with blight and mildew. When your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees grew, the locusts ate them up. Yet you have not returned to me," says the LORD.
10"I sent a plague among you, like the plague of Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword, and took your horses away. I made the stink of your camps rise into your noses. Yet you have not returned to me," says the LORD.
11"I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick pulled out of the fire. Yet you have not returned to me," says the LORD.
12"So this is what I will do to you, Israel. And because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel."
13For look, he is the one who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and tells man what his thought is. He makes the morning dark, and walks on the high places of the earth. The LORD, The God of hosts, is his name.