The city of Samaria will suffer
1The city of Samaria will suffer.
The people of Ephraim who are always drunk
are proud of Samaria.
The city is on a hill above a fertile valley,
and it is a beautiful city.
But it will become like a flower
that becomes dry and falls off.
2Now the Lord will send someone
who is strong and can do what he wants to do.
He will come like a storm wind,
a storm with hail-stones
that destroys everything.
He will be like a big rain storm
and he will destroy the city.
3The drunk men of Ephraim
are proud of their city,
but other people will come and
trample the city with their feet.
4This city on a hill
above a fertile valley,
this beautiful city, will become
like a flower that becomes dry and falls off.
The city will be like the first fig
that becomes ripe.
Someone sees the fig,
and he picks it and eats it.
5The people of the Lord
who are still_alive
on that day will be proud of Him.
They will be proud of the Lord
who rules over all.
6He will teach them to decide
fairly about people at the gate.
He will make the people strong
who have to stop the enemies
that want to come into the city.
The Lord will talk to these people
7The priests and prophets
have also become drunk.
They have drunk wine and beer
and they fall down when they walk.
They don't know what they are doing,
and they don't know where they are.
The Lord shows them what will happen
but they fall down when they walk.
They must say what is right,
but they can not stand on their feet.
8They become sick and vomit
on all the tables in the temple.
9They say: ‘We are not little children.
Why does Isaiah want to teach us?
Why does he want to tell us
what the Lord has told him?
10Yes, he talks and talks,
and he keeps on telling us what we must do.’
11Yes, they are mocking,
but now the Lord will also mock them.
He will talk to these people in a different way.
12Long ago He told his people:
‘Here is a place where you can rest.
Here you must let the people
who are tired rest. Here you can live safely.’
But they did not want to listen.
13Now the Lord will talk to them again.
He will keep on telling them what to do.
He will do it until they fall on their backs
and hurt themselves.
Their enemies will catch them
and take them away.
A water flood will come
14So, you who laugh at my words,
you who rule over the people of Jerusalem,
you must listen to the Lord.
15You must listen because you say:
‘We have made an agreement with death
and when the water flood comes,
we will not die.’
You think the lies that you tell
will protect you.
16That is why the Lord now says:
‘I am putting down a stone in Jerusalem,
a stone that will test people.
It is a precious corner-stone
that will be a foundation.
The people who believe in Me
will be safe, and they will not be ashamed.
17I will test the people and see
if they have done right and lived in the right way.
You think your lies will protect you,
but when the enemies come
like a storm of hail-stones,
you will die, and there will be nothing left of you.
Your lies will not protect you.
18Your agreement that
you have made
with death will not help you.
When the water flood comes,
it will flow over you.
19The water flood will come every day.
It will flow over you and it
will wash you away every time.
It will come in the day and at night.
Everyone will be afraid and tremble
when they hear it coming.
20No one will be able to sleep.
It will be like when you want to sleep
but your bed is too short and
you can not lie down straight,
or when the blanket is too small,
and you can not cover yourself with it.’
21The Lord will be very angry
and He will come. He will come
like when He came at Perazim Mountain,
or like when He came in the Gibeon Valley.
He will come to do what He wants to do
and you will know nothing about it.
22That is why you must not tell
each other that it will not happen,
because then you will make it worse.
I have heard what the Lord
who rules over all said.
He has decided that He
wants to destroy all the land.
The Lord teaches people what to do
23You must listen and hear what I say.
24A farmer does not keep on ploughing
his ground when he wants to sow seeds.
He does not keep on
preparing the hard ground.
25No, when the ground is ready,
he sows the seeds. He sows dill,
cumin, wheat, barley and rye,
and he sows every kind of seed
where it must be.
26The farmer knows what to do
because his God teaches him.
27The farmer does not
pull a threshing-sledge
or a threshing-wagon over
the dill and cumin
to take out the seeds.
No, he beats the seed
with a stick to get it out.
28And when he pulls
a wagon with horses
over the wheat to take out the seeds,
he does not keep on doing it for too long,
because then the wheat seeds
will all be broken.
No, he grinds the wheat
when he wants to bake bread.
29It is wonderful
that the farmer knows all this,
but it is the Lord who rules over all
who has taught him to do it.
The Lord teaches everyone what to do.
