1 “Whenever I want to heal my people Israel and make them prosperous again, all I can see is their wickedness and the evil they do. They cheat one another; they break into houses and steal; they rob people in the streets.
2 It never enters their heads that I will remember all this evil; but their sins surround them, and I cannot avoid seeing them.”
3 The Lord says, “People deceive the king and his officers by their evil plots.
4 They are all treacherous and disloyal. Their hatred smoulders like the fire in an oven, which is not stirred by the baker until the dough is ready to bake.
5 On the day of the king's celebration they made the king and his officials drunk and foolish with wine.
6 Yes, they burned like an oven with their plotting. All night their anger smouldered, and in the morning it burst into flames.
7 “In the heat of their anger they murdered their rulers. Their kings have been assassinated one after another, but no one prays to me for help.”