4
Listen to me, you who walk on helpless people, you who are trying to destroy the poor people of this country, saying,
5
"When will the New Moon festival be over so we can sell grain? so we can bring out wheat to sell? We can charge them more and give them less, and we can change the scales to cheat the people.
6
We will buy poor people for silver, and needy people for the price of a pair of sandals. We will even sell the wheat that was swept up from the floor."
7
The Lord has sworn by his name, the Pride of Jacob, "I will never forget everything that these people did.
8
The whole land will shake because of it, and everyone who lives in the land will cry for those who died. The whole land will rise like the Nile; it will be shaken, and then it will fall like the Nile River in Egypt."
9
The Lord God says: "At that time I will cause the sun to go down at noon and make the earth dark on a bright day.
10
I will change your festivals into days of crying for the dead, and all your songs will become songs of sadness. I will make all of you wear rough cloth to show your sadness; I will make you shave your heads as well. I will make it like a time of crying for the death of an only son, and its end like the end of an awful day."
11
The Lord God says: "The days are coming when I will cause a time of hunger in the land. The people will not be hungry for bread or thirsty for water, but they will be hungry for words from the Lord.
12
They will wander from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea, from the north to the east. They will search for the word of the Lord, but they won't find it.
13
At that time the beautiful young women and the young men will become weak from thirst.
14
They make promises by the idol in Samaria and say, 'As surely as the god of Dan lives . . . ' and, 'As surely as the god of Beersheban lives, we promise . . . ' So they will fall and never get up again."