Chapter 3

This, then, is the Lord’s message to you, men of Israel, to the whole race I rescued from Egypt:

Nation is none I have claimed for my own, save you; and guilt of yours is none that shall go unpunished.

Tryst there must be, if friends will meet and journey together;

prey there must be, ere lion will roar in the forest, lion’s whelp growl in its lair;

bird is not pinned to the ground, without fowler to snare it, nor trap released without a catch made.

Sounds trumpet in the streets, men do well to be afraid; if peril is afoot in the city, doubt not it is of the Lord’s sending.

Never does he act, but his servants, the prophets, are in the secret.

Roars lion, who but will tremble? Comes the divine warning, who but will prophesy?

Raise a cry from the house-tops, there in Azotus, there in Egypt’s land: To the hills about Samaria betake you, and look deep into the heart of her, what turbulent doings are there, what wrongs men suffer!

In yonder palaces, the Lord says, that are store-houses of oppression and rapine, honest doing is all forgot.

This doom, then, the Lord God utters: Distress and siege for such a land as this! All thy fastnesses shall be dismantled, all thy palaces spoiled.

Wilt thou have lion disgorge his prey? Pleased enough the shepherd, if a pair of legs he recover, a mangled ear! They shall fare no better, the Israelites that lie on a corner of the mattress at Samaria, and have their bed at Damascus.

A message for you, says the Lord, the God of hosts, a warning for the sons of Jacob!

I will have a reckoning with the rebellions of Israel, a reckoning with those altars of theirs at Bethel, that shall have the horns of them cut off and hurled to the ground;

on summer dwelling of yours and winter dwelling my hand shall fall, houses of ivory and houses of the common folk; all shall lie in ruin, the Lord says.