I said, 'Plow new ground for yourselves, plant righteousness, and reap the blessings that your devotion to me will produce. It is time for you to turn to me, your LORD, and I will come and pour out blessings upon you.'

I have seen people plow fields of evil and plant wickedness like seed; now they harvest wickedness and evil.

If you plant the seeds of injustice, disaster will spring up, and your oppression of others will end.

It isn't right! We go just as we came. We labor, trying to catch the wind, and what do we get?

Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. You will reap exactly what you plant.

But even if they sprouted and blossomed the very morning you planted them, there would still be no harvest. There would be only trouble and incurable pain.

My people planted wheat, but gathered weeds; they have worked hard, but got nothing for it. Because of my fierce anger their crops have failed."

and do not realize that this reliance on foreigners has robbed them of their strength. Their days are numbered, but they don't even know it.

A foreign nation will take all the crops that you have worked so hard to grow, while you receive nothing but constant oppression and harsh treatment.

Whenever the Israelites would plant their crops, the Midianites would come with the Amalekites and the desert tribes and attack them.

They would come with their livestock and tents, as thick as locusts. They and their camels were too many to count. They came and devastated the land,

So the LORD was angry with Israel, and he allowed King Hazael of Syria and his son Benhadad to defeat Israel time after time.

The LORD sent Israel a leader, who freed them from the Syrians, and so the Israelites lived in peace, as before.

Jehoahaz had no armed forces left except fifty cavalry troops, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers, because the king of Syria had destroyed the rest, trampling them down like dust.

Tiglath Pileser, the emperor of Assyria, invaded Israel, and Menahem gave him thirty-eight tons of silver to gain his support in strengthening Menahem's power over the country.

It was while Pekah was king that Tiglath Pileser, the emperor of Assyria, captured the cities of Ijon, Abel Beth Maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, and Hazor, and the territories of Gilead, Galilee, and Naphtali, and took the people to Assyria as prisoners.