and their message will spread its infection ¹  like gangrene. Hymenaeus and Philetus are in this group. ² 

When they had eaten them, ¹  no one would have known ²  that they had done so, for they were just as bad-looking as before. Then I woke up.

“You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it.

You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them.

They invaded the land ¹  and devoured ²  its crops ³  all the way to Gaza. They left nothing for the Israelites to eat, ⁴  and they took away ⁵  the sheep, oxen, and donkeys.

Dogs will devour Jezebel on the plot of ground in Jezreel; she will not be buried.’” ¹  Then he opened the door and ran away.

All those who behave wickedly ¹  do not understand – ²  those who devour my people as if they were eating bread, and do not call out to the Lord.

All those who behave wickedly ¹  do not understand ²  – those who devour my people as if they were eating bread, and do not call out to God.

Don’t let the current overpower me! Don’t let the deep swallow me up! Don’t let the pit ¹  devour me! ² 

Yes, your land lies in ruins; it is desolate and devastated. ¹  But now you will be too small to hold your residents, and those who devoured you will be far away.

For a moth will eat away at them like clothes; a clothes moth will devour them like wool. But the vindication I provide ¹  will be permanent; the deliverance I give will last.”

כ (Kaf) The Lord fully vented ¹  his wrath; he poured out his fierce anger. ²  He started a fire in Zion; it consumed her foundations. ³ 

They sow the wind, and so they will reap the whirlwind! The stalk does not have any standing grain; it will not produce any flour. Even if it were to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it all up.

Surely they will be totally consumed ¹  like ²  entangled thorn bushes, ³  like the drink of drunkards, ⁴  like very ⁵  dry stubble.

They ¹  will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, ²  or lambs of your flocks ³  until they have destroyed you.

Indeed, I am about to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not take heed to the sheep headed to slaughter, will not seek the scattered, and will not heal the injured. ¹  Moreover, he will not nourish the one that is healthy but instead will eat the meat of the fat sheep ²  and tear off their hooves.

I wipe them out and beat them to death; they cannot get up; they fall at my feet.

The hungry ¹  eat up his harvest, ²  and take it even from behind the thorns, ³  and the thirsty ⁴  swallow up ⁵  their fortune. ⁶ 

‘Surely our enemies ¹  are destroyed, and fire consumes their wealth.’

Men ¹  move boundary stones; they seize the flock and pasture them. ²