1
Open your doors, Levanon, that fire may consume your cedars.
2
Wail, cypress, for the cedar has fallen, because the majestic ones are devastated. Wail, oaks of Bashan, for the fortified forest has come down.
3
A voice of the wailing of the shepherds, for their majesty is devastated. A voice of the roaring of young lions, for the pride of the Yarden is devastated.
4
Thus says Yahuah my Elohim: “Shepherd the flock appointed for slaughter,
5
whose buyers slaughter them and are not held guilty, and whose sellers say: ‘Blessed be Yahuah, for I have become rich.’ And their shepherds have no compassion upon them.
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For I will no longer have compassion upon the inhabitants of the land,” declares Yahuah. “And see, I am giving each Adam into the hand of his neighbor and into the hand of his king. And they shall crush the land, and I will not deliver from their hand.”
7
So I shepherded the flock appointed for slaughter, especially the afflicted of the flock. And I took for myself two staffs. The one I called Favor, and the other I called Union. And I shepherded the flock.
8
And I cut off three shepherds in one month. And my being became impatient with them, and their being also loathed me.
9
And I said: “I will not shepherd you. What is dying, let it die. And what is being cut off, let it be cut off. And those remaining, let each ish devour the flesh of his companion.”
10
And I took my staff Favor and cut it in two, to break My Covenant that I had cut with all the peoples.
11
And it was broken in that day. And thus the afflicted of the flock, who were watching me, knew that it was the Word of Yahuah.
12
And I said to them: “If it is good in your eyes, give me my wages. And if not, cease.” And they weighed out my wages: thirty pieces of silver.
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And Yahuah said to me: “Throw it to the potter— the magnificent price at which I was valued by them.” And I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the House of Yahuah to the potter.
14
Then I cut in two my second staff, Union, to break the brotherhood between Yehudah and Yisra’el.
15
And Yahuah said to me: “Take for yourself again the instruments of a foolish shepherd.
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For see, I am raising up a shepherd in the land who will not visit those being cut off, nor seek the young one, nor heal the broken, nor sustain the one standing. But he shall eat the flesh of the fat and tear off their hooves.
17
Woe to the worthless shepherd who forsakes the flock. A sword shall be against his arm and against his right eye. Drying, his arm shall surely dry up, and darkening, his right eye shall surely become dark.”