1. Throw open your gates, O Lebanon, And let fire consume your cedars!
2. Howl, cypresses, for cedars have fallen! How the mighty are ravaged! Howl, you oaks of Bashan, For the stately forest is laid low!
3. Hark, the wailing of the shepherds, For their rich pastures are ravaged; Hark, the roaring of the great beasts, For the jungle of the Jordan is ravaged.
4. Thus said my God the LORD: Tend the sheep meant for slaughter,
5. whose buyers will slaughter them with impunity, whose seller will say, "Praised be the LORD! I'll get rich," and whose shepherd will not pity them.
6. For I will pity the inhabitants of the land no more -- declares the LORD -- but I will place every man at the mercy of every other man and at the mercy of his king; they shall break the country to bits, and I will not rescue it from their hands.
7. So I tended the sheep meant for slaughter, for those poor men of the sheep. I got two staffs, one of which I named Favor and the other Unity, and I proceeded to tend the sheep.
8. But I lost the three shep- herds in one month; then my patience with them was at an end, and they in turn were disgusted with me.
9. So I declared, "I am not going to tend you; let the one that is to die die and the one that is to get lost get lost; and let the rest devour each other's flesh!"
10. Taking my staff Favor, I cleft it in two, so as to annul the covenant I had made with all the peoples;
11. and when it was annulled that day, the same poor men of the sheep who watched me realized that it was a message from the LORD.
12. Then I said to them, "If you are satisfied, pay me my wages; if not, don't." So they weighed out my wages, thirty shekels of silver --
13. the noble sum that I was worth in their estima- tion. The LORD said to me, "Deposit it in the treasury." And I took the thirty shekels and deposited it in the treasury in the House of the LORD.
14. Then I cleft in two my second staff, Unity, in order to annul the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
15. The LORD said to me further: Get yourself the gear of a foolish shepherd.
16. For I am going to raise up in the land a shepherd who will neither miss the lost [sheep], nor seek the strayed, nor heal the injured, nor sustain the frail, but will feast on the flesh of the fat ones and tear off their hoofs.
17. Oh, the worthless shepherd Who abandons the flock! Let a sword descend upon his arm And upon his right eye! His arm shall shrivel up; His right eye shall go blind.
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