Understanding God's Heart For Us in Song
1 Open your doors, Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars.
2 Wail, cypress tree, for the cedar has fallen, because the stately ones are destroyed. Wail, you oaks of Bashan, for the strong forest has come down.
3 A voice of the wailing of the shepherds! For their glory is destroyed—a voice of the roaring of young lions! For the pride of the Jordan is ruined.
4 Yahweh my God says: “Feed the flock of slaughter.
5 Their buyers slaughter them and go unpunished. Those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be Yahweh, for I am rich;’ and their own shepherds don’t pity them.
6 For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land,” says Yahweh; “but, behold, I will deliver every one of the men into his neighbor’s hand and into the hand of his king. They will strike the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver them.”
7 So I fed the flock to be slaughtered, especially the oppressed of the flock. I took for myself two staffs. The one I called “Favor” and the other I called “Union”, and I fed the flock.
8 I cut off the three shepherds in one month; for my soul was weary of them, and their soul also loathed me.