You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the choice animals, but you do not feed the sheep!

“‘As for you, my sheep, this is what the sovereign Lord says: Look, I am about to judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats.

He said to them, “Would not any one of you, if he had one sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, take hold of it and lift it out?

Rejoice in that day, and jump for joy, because ¹  your reward is great in heaven. For their ancestors ²  did the same things to the prophets. ³ 

This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is greater than I am, ¹  because he existed before me.’

Then the priest must take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and he must pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar.

You must set apart ¹  for the Lord your God every firstborn male born to your herds and flocks. You must not work the firstborn of your bulls or shear the firstborn of your flocks.

There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land ¹  for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning. ² 

and after several years ¹  went down to visit ²  Ahab in Samaria. ³  Ahab slaughtered many sheep and cattle to honor Jehoshaphat and those who came with him. ⁴  He persuaded him to join in an attack ⁵  against Ramoth Gilead.

We also accept responsibility, as is written in the law, for bringing the firstborn of our sons and our cattle and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks to the temple of our God, to the priests who are ministering in the temple of our God.

“I, the Lord who rules over all, say: ¹  ‘This place will indeed lie in ruins. There will be no people or animals in it. But there will again be in it and in its towns sheepfolds where shepherds can rest their sheep.

And you ¹  will provide a grain offering with it morning by morning, a sixth of an ephah, and a third of a gallon ²  of olive oil to moisten the choice flour, as a grain offering to the Lord; this is a perpetual statute.

This is what the Lord says: “Just as a shepherd salvages from the lion’s mouth a couple of leg bones or a piece of an ear, so the Israelites who live in Samaria will be salvaged. ¹  They will be left with just a corner of a bed, ²  and a part ³  of a couch.”

Those survivors from Jacob will live among the nations, in the midst of many peoples. They will be like a lion among the animals of the forest, like a young lion among the flocks of sheep, which attacks when it passes through; it rips its prey ¹  and there is no one to stop it. ² 

“When a foreigner lives ¹  with you and wants to observe the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, ²  and then he may approach and observe it, and he will be like one who is born in the land ³  – but no uncircumcised person may eat of it.

The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died ¹  by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by ²  the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full, ³  for you have brought us out into this desert to kill ⁴  this whole assembly with hunger!”

The bones of Joseph, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the part of the field that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for one hundred pieces of money. ¹  So it became the inheritance of the tribe of Joseph. ² 

Also their neighbors, from as far away as Issachar, Zebulun, and Naphtali, were bringing food on donkeys, camels, mules, and oxen. There were large supplies of flour, fig cakes, raisins, wine, olive oil, beef, and lamb, ¹  for Israel was celebrating. ² 

So listen to what I, the Lord, have planned against Edom, what I intend to do to ¹  the people who live in Teman. ²  Their little ones will be dragged off. I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done. ³ 

So listen to what I, the Lord, have planned against Babylon, what I intend to do to the people who inhabit the land of Babylonia. ¹  Their little ones will be dragged off. I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done.