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The Blind Perversity of the Whole Nation

⁴ You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:
When people fall, do they not get up again?
   If they go astray, do they not turn back?
⁵ Why then has this people^* turned away
   in perpetual backsliding?
They have held fast to deceit,
   they have refused to return.
⁶ I have given heed and listened,
   but they do not speak honestly;
no one repents of wickedness,
   saying, ‘What have I done!’
All of them turn to their own course,
   like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
⁷ Even the stork in the heavens
   knows its times;
and the turtle-dove, swallow, and crane^*
   observe the time of their coming;
but my people do not know
   the ordinance of the Lord.

⁸ How can you say, ‘We are wise,
   and the law of the Lord is with us’,
when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes
   has made it into a lie?
⁹ The wise shall be put to shame,
   they shall be dismayed and taken;
since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
   what wisdom is in them?
¹⁰ Therefore I will give their wives to others
   and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
   everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest
   everyone deals falsely.
¹¹ They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
   saying, ‘Peace, peace’,
   when there is no peace.
¹² They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
   yet they were not at all ashamed,
   they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
   at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,

says the Lord.
¹³ When I wanted to gather them, says the Lord,
   there are^* no grapes on the vine,
   nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered,
   and what I gave them has passed away from them.^*