¹ The word of Yahweh which came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah kings of Judah. His visions about Samaria and Jerusalem.

² Listen, all you peoples, attend, earth and everyone on it! Yahweh intends to give evidence against you, the Lord, from his holy temple.

³ For look, Yahweh is leaving his home, down he comes, he treads the heights of earth.

⁴ Beneath him, the mountains melt, and valleys are torn open, like wax near a fire, like water pouring down a slope.

⁵ All this is because of the crime of Jacob, the sin of the House of Israel. What is the crime of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? What is the sin of the House of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?

⁶ So I shall make Samaria a ruin in the open country, a place for planting vines. I shall send her stones rolling into the valley, until I have laid her foundations bare.

⁷ All her images will be shattered, all her earnings consumed by fire. I shall leave all her idols derelict- they were amassed out of prostitutes' earnings and prostitutes' earnings once more they will be.

⁸ This is why I shall howl and wail, why I shall go barefoot and naked, why I shall howl like the jackals, why I shall shriek like the owls;

⁹ for there is no cure for the wounds that Yahweh inflicts: the blow falls on Judah, it falls on the gateway of my people, on Jerusalem itself.

¹⁰ Do not announce it in Gath, in . . . shed no tears! In Beth-Leaphrah roll in the dust!

¹¹ Sound the horn, inhabitant of Shaphir! She has not left her city, she who lives in Zaanan. Beth-Ezel is torn from its foundations, from its strong supports.

¹² What hope has she of happiness, she who lives in Maroth? Instead Yahweh sent down disaster on the gateway of Jerusalem itself!

¹³ Harness the horse to the chariot, you inhabitant of Lachish! That is where the sin of the daughter of Zion began; the crimes of Israel can be traced to you!

¹⁴ And so you must provide a dowry for Moresheth-Gath. Beth-Achzib will prove a disappointment for the kings of Israel.

¹⁵ The plunderer will come to you again, you citizen of Mareshah! And into Adullam will vanish the glory of Israel.

¹⁶ Off with your hair, shave your head, for the children that were your joy. Make yourselves bald like the vulture, for they have left you for exile.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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