Micah 7 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Misery on me. I have come out like someone picking in a field after the summer fruit is in, after the grapes have all been gathered. There is not a bunch left to eat, not one early fig, and an early fig is what I wanted.

The loyal have disappeared from the land. Among all these people there is not one who is straight. Every one of them lies in wait for blood. Each man hunts his own brother with a net.

Their hands are good at doing harm. The official puts in his request, the judge names his price, the big man says what he wants, and between them they braid it into place.

The best of them is a bramble. The straightest of them is a thorn hedge. The day your lookouts warned about has come, the day you are called to account. Now they will not know which way to turn.

Do not trust the man next door. Do not lean on a friend. Watch what you say to the woman lying in your arms.

A son treats his father like dirt. A daughter stands up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies are the people in his own house.

But I will keep watching for Yahweh. I will wait for the God who gets me out. My God will hear me.

Do not gloat over me, my enemy. I have fallen, but I am getting up. I am sitting in the dark, and Yahweh is my light.

I will carry Yahweh's anger, because I failed him, until he takes up my case and hands down my verdict. He will bring me out into the light, and I will see him do right by me.

Then my enemy will see it, and shame will cover the one who said to me, "Where is Yahweh your God?" My own eyes will watch her go down, trodden like mud in the street.

A day is coming for building your walls, the day your borders are pushed far out.

On that day they will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt, from Egypt to the great river, from sea to sea, from mountain to mountain.

And the land will lie waste because of the people living on it, for the fruit of what they have done.

Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, living off by themselves in scrubland with good orchards all around them. Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead the way they did in the old days.

As in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show him things he will not believe.

The nations will see it and be ashamed of all their strength. They will put a hand over the mouth. Their ears will go deaf.

They will lick dust like a snake, like things that crawl on the ground. They will come shaking out of their hideouts, turning in fear toward Yahweh our God, and they will be afraid of you.

Who is a God like you, lifting guilt off what is left of his people, walking past the way they turned on him? He does not hold on to his anger, because loyal love is what he loves.

He will come back to us with mercy. He will put our guilt under his foot and grind it down. You will throw everything we did wrong into the deep water of the sea.

You will hand truth to Jacob and loyal love to Abraham, the way you swore to our fathers back in the old days.