⁶ The word about the Beasts of the South. Through the land of trouble and grief, the land of the she-lion and the voice of the lion, of the snake and the burning winged snake, they take their wealth on the backs of young asses, and their stores on camels, to a people in whom is no profit.

¹⁵ Who was your guide through that great and cruel waste, where there were poison-snakes and scorpions and a dry land without water; who made water come out of the hard rock for you;

⁴ To the order which I gave your fathers on the day when I took them out of the land of Egypt, out of the oven of iron, saying, Give ear to my voice, and do all the orders I have given you: so you will be my people, and I will be your God:

¹ Bel is bent down, Nebo is falling; their images are on the beasts and on the cattle: the things which you took about have become a weight to the tired beast.

² They are bent down, they are falling together: they were not able to keep their images safe, but they themselves have been taken prisoner.

² And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels weighted down with spices, and stores of gold and jewels: and when she came to Solomon she had talk with him of everything in her mind.

²⁰ But the Lord has taken you out of the flaming fire, out of Egypt, to be to him the people of his heritage, as you are today.

⁶ And they never said, Where is the Lord, who took us up out of the land of Egypt; who was our guide through the waste of sand, through an unplanted land full of deep holes, through a dry land of deep shade, which no one went through and where no man was living?

⁹ For they have gone up to Assyria like an ass going by himself; Ephraim has given money to get lovers.

¹⁰ But though they give money to the nations for help, still I will send them in all directions; and in a short time they will be without a king and rulers.

¹ The deceit of Ephraim and the false words of Israel are about me on every side. ...

⁴² The queen of the South will come up in the day of judging and give her decision against this generation: for she came from the ends of the earth to give ear to the wisdom of Solomon; and now a greater than Solomon is here.

⁹ And you went to Melech with oil and much perfume, and you sent your representatives far off, and went as low as the underworld.

⁴ And I will give the Egyptians into the hand of a cruel lord; and a hard king will be their ruler, says the Lord, the Lord of armies.

¹⁰ And the overseers of the people and their responsible men went out and said to the people, Pharaoh says, I will give you no more dry stems.

¹¹ Go yourselves and get dry stems wherever you are able; for your work is not to be any less.

¹² So the people were sent in all directions through the land of Egypt to get dry grass for stems.

¹³ And the overseers went on driving them and saying, Do your full day's work as before when there were dry stems for you.

¹⁴ And the responsible men of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's overseers had put over them, were given blows, and they said to them, Why have you not done your regular work, in making bricks as before?

¹⁵ Then the responsible men of the children of Israel came to Pharaoh, protesting and saying, Why are you acting in this way to your servants?

¹⁶ They give us no dry stems and they say to us, Make bricks: and they give your servants blows; but it is your people who are in the wrong.

¹⁷ But he said, You have no love for work: that is why you say, Let us go and make an offering to the Lord.

¹⁸ Go now, get back to your work; no dry stems will be given to you, but you are to make the full number of bricks.

¹⁹ Then the responsible men of the children of Israel saw that they were purposing evil when they said, The number of bricks which you have to make every day will be no less than before.

²⁰ And they came face to face with Moses and Aaron, who were in their way when they came out from Pharaoh:

²¹ And they said to them, May the Lord take note of you and be your judge; for you have given Pharaoh and his servants a bad opinion of us, putting a sword in their hands for our destruction.

⁶ Then the Lord sent poison-snakes among the people; and their bites were a cause of death to numbers of the people of Israel.

⁷ Then the people came to Moses and said, We have done wrong in crying out against the Lord and against you: make prayer to the Lord to take away the snakes from us. So Moses made prayer for the people.

¹⁶ And he is not to get together a great army of horses for himself, or make the people go back to Egypt to get horses for him: because the Lord has said, You will never again go back that way.

¹ Now the queen of Sheba, hearing great things of Solomon, came to Jerusalem to put his wisdom to the test with hard questions; and with her came a very great train, and camels weighted down with spices, and great stores of gold and jewels: and when she came to Solomon she had talk with him of everything in her mind.

² Then Asa took silver and gold out of the stores of the Lord's house and of the king's store-house, and sent to Ben-hadad, king of Aram, at Damascus, saying,

²⁰ Then Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, came to him, but was a cause of trouble and not of strength to him.

²¹ For Ahaz took a part of the wealth from the house of the Lord, and from the house of the king and of the great men, and gave it to the king of Assyria; but it was no help to him.

²² And in the time of his trouble, this same King Ahaz did even more evil against the Lord.

²³ For he made offerings to the gods of Damascus, who were attacking him, and said, Because the gods of the kings of Aram are giving them help, I will make offerings to them so that they may give me help. But they were the cause of his downfall, and of that of all Israel.

²² And he will be looking down on the earth, and there will be trouble and dark clouds, black night where there is no seeing.

⁷ For this cause they will take away their wealth, and the stores they have got together, over the stream of the water-plants.

¹⁴ And made their lives bitter with hard work, making building-material and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields under the hardest conditions.