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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
Understand also with your ears the holy Micah as he, like a heavenly trumpet, sounds …
Understand also with your ears the holy Micah as he, like a heavenly trumpet, sounds forth very concisely against the crafty princes of the people. Hear now, he says, ye princes of the house of Jacob. Is it not for you to know judgment, though ye hate the good and seek the evil, plucking their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones? How have they eaten the flesh of my people and flayed their skins from off them, have broken their bones and chopped them as flesh in the cauldron? They shall cry unto God and he will not hear them, and he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have behaved themselves ill in their imaginings. Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people to err, that bite with their teeth and cry unto them, Peace, though it (peace) is not put into their mouth; I have stirred up war against them (i.e., people). Therefore night shall be unto you in consequence of your vision and darkness shall be unto you in consequence of divining, and the sun shall go down upon the prophets and the day shall be dark over them, then shall the seers of dreams be confounded and the diviners mocked, and they themselves shall decry against all because there shall not be that heareth them. I shall surely fill my strength with the Spirit of the Lord, and with judgment and might, to declare unto the house of Jacob its impieties and to Israel his sins. Hear this therefore ye leaders of the house of Jacob and the residue of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment and pervert equity, that build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquities. The leaders thereof judge for rewards and the priests thereof gave answer for hire, and the prophets thereof were divining for money, yet did they rest in the Lord, saying: Is not the Lord in the midst of us; evils shall not come upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall be like the watch-tower of an orchard, and the mountain of the house as a place of forest. After a while: Woe is me because I have become as one that gathereth stubble in harvest, and as a bunch of grapes in the vintage, when there is not a cluster to eat of its first fruits; woe is my soul! it perisheth in works of earth, always doth reverence for sinners rise reverently from the earth, and he that amendeth among men is not. All contend in judgment for blood, and everyone hath greatly troubled his neighbour, he prepareth his hands for evil.