The people cry out, "The summer is gone, the harvest is over, but we have not been saved."

Your soldiers have stumbled and fallen; each one says to the other, 'Hurry! Let's go home to our people and escape the enemy's sword!'

Even her hired soldiers are helpless as calves. They did not stand and fight; all of them turned and ran. The day of their doom had arrived, the time of their destruction.

Do not let seeds be planted in that country nor let a harvest be gathered. Every foreigner living there will be afraid of the attacking army and will go back home."

"The foreigners living in Babylon will run away to their homelands, scattering like deer escaping from hunters, like sheep without a shepherd.

That is all the good they will do you--- those astrologers you've consulted all your life. They all will leave you and go their own way, and none will be left to save you."

So the foolish ones went off to buy some oil; and while they were gone, the bridegroom arrived. The five who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast, and the door was closed.

'Certainly not! I don't know you,' the bridegroom answered."

A man named Oded, a prophet of the LORD, lived in the city of Samaria. He met the returning Israelite army with its Judean prisoners as it was about to enter the city, and he said, "The LORD God of your ancestors was angry with Judah and let you defeat them, but now he has heard of the vicious way you slaughtered them.

I said, "O God, I am too ashamed to raise my head in your presence. Our sins pile up higher than our heads; they reach as high as the heavens.

The tree, so tall that it reached the sky, could be seen by everyone in the world.

"Your Majesty, you are the tree, tall and strong. You have grown so great that you reach the sky, and your power extends over the whole world.

For her sins are piled up as high as heaven, and God remembers her wicked ways.