² In that day,
“A pleasant vineyard,^[a] sing of it!
³     I, the Lord, am its keeper;
    every moment I water it.
    Lest anyone punish it,
I keep it night and day;
⁴     I have no wrath.
Would that I had thorns and briers to battle!
    I would march against them,
    I would burn them up together.
⁵ Or let them lay hold of my protection,
    let them make peace with me,
    let them make peace with me.”

⁶ In days to come^[b] Jacob shall take root,
    Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots
    and fill the whole world with fruit.

⁷ Has he struck them as he struck those who struck them?
    Or have they been slain as their slayers were slain?
⁸ Measure by measure,^[c] by exile you contended with them;
    he removed them with his fierce breath^[d] in the day of the east wind.
⁹ Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be atoned for,
    and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:^[e]
when he makes all the stones of the altars
    like chalkstones crushed to pieces,
    no Asherim or incense altars will remain standing.
¹⁰ For the fortified city is solitary,
    a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness;
there the calf grazes;
    there it lies down and strips its branches.
¹¹ When its boughs are dry, they are broken;
    women come and make a fire of them.
For this is a people without discernment;
    therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them;
    he who formed them will show them no favor.

⁵ In that day the Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory,^[h]
    and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people,
⁶ and a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment,
    and strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate.

⁷ These also reel with wine
    and stagger with strong drink;
the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink,
    they are swallowed by^[i] wine,
    they stagger with strong drink,
they reel in vision,
    they stumble in giving judgment.
⁸ For all tables are full of filthy vomit,
    with no space left.

⁹ “To whom will he teach knowledge,
    and to whom will he explain the message?
Those who are weaned from the milk,
    those taken from the breast?
¹⁰ For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
    line upon line, line upon line,
    here a little, there a little.”

¹¹ For by people of strange lips
    and with a foreign tongue
the Lord will speak to this people,
¹²     to whom he has said,
“This is rest;
    give rest to the weary;
and this is repose”;
    yet they would not hear.
¹³ And the word of the Lord will be to them
precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
    line upon line, line upon line,
    here a little, there a little,
that they may go, and fall backward,
    and be broken, and snared, and taken.

²³ Give ear, and hear my voice;
    give attention, and hear my speech.
²⁴ Does he who plows for sowing plow continually?
    Does he continually open and harrow his ground?
²⁵ When he has leveled its surface,
    does he not scatter dill, sow cumin,
and put in wheat in rows
    and barley in its proper place,
    and emmer^[k] as the border?
²⁶ For he is rightly instructed;
    his God teaches him.

²⁷ Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
    nor is a cart wheel rolled over cumin,
but dill is beaten out with a stick,
    and cumin with a rod.
²⁸ Does one crush grain for bread?
    No, he does not thresh it forever;^[l]
when he drives his cart wheel over it
    with his horses, he does not crush it.
²⁹ This also comes from the Lord of hosts;
    he is wonderful in counsel
    and excellent in wisdom.