²² Your silver is no longer true metal, your wine is mixed with water.

²⁸ All of them are turned away, going about with false stories; they are brass and iron: they are all workers of deceit.

²⁹ The blower is blowing strongly, the lead is burned away in the fire: they go on heating the metal to no purpose, for the evil-doers are not taken away.

³⁰ They will be named waste silver, because the Lord has given them up.

¹ How dark has the gold become! how changed the best gold! the stones of the holy place are dropping out at the top of every street.

² The valued sons of Zion, whose price was the best gold, are looked on as vessels of earth, the work of the hands of the potter!

¹⁸ Son of man, the children of Israel have become like the poorest sort of waste metal to me: they are all silver and brass and tin and iron and lead mixed with waste.

¹⁹ For this cause the Lord has said: Because you have all become waste metal, see, I will get you together inside Jerusalem.

²⁰ As they put silver and brass and iron and lead and tin together inside the oven, heating up the fire on it to make it soft; so will I get you together in my wrath and in my passion, and, heating the fire with my breath, will make you soft.

²¹ Yes, I will take you, breathing on you the fire of my wrath, and you will become soft in it.

²² As silver becomes soft in the oven, so you will become soft in it; and you will be certain that I the Lord have let loose my passion on you.

¹⁸ Their drink has become bitter; they are completely false; her rulers take pleasure in shame.

⁴ O Ephraim, what am I to do to you? O Judah, what am I to do to you? For your love is like a morning cloud, and like the dew which goes early away.

¹⁷ For we are not like the great number who make use of the word of God for profit: but our words are true, as from God, being said as before God in Christ.