¹⁵And the word of Yahweh came to me, saying,ⁿ ¹⁶“And you, son of man,^o take for yourself a piece of wood,^p and write on it, ‘For Judah and for the Israelites^q his associates,’ and take another piece of wood, and write on it, ‘For Joseph, the piece of wood of^r Ephraim and all of the house of Israel his associates.’ ¹⁷And join them one to the other with respect to you as one piece of wood, so that they may become one in your hand. ¹⁸When^s your people^t say to you, saying,^u ‘Will you not inform us as to what these actions mean for you?’ ¹⁹Then speak to them, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh: “Look! I am taking the piece of wood for Joseph that is in the hand of Ephraim and the tribes of Israel its associates, and I will put them on it, the piece of wood of Judah, and I will make them into one piece of wood, so that they be one in my hand.’ ” ²⁰And the pieces of wood on which you wrote will be in your hand before their eyes. ²¹And speak to them, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh: “Look! I am taking the Israelites^v from among the nations to which they went,^w and I will gather them from everywhere,^x and I will bring them to their own soil. ²²And I will make them into one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel, and they will all have one king as their king,^y and they^z will not again be two nations and will not again divide into two kingdoms again. ²³And they will not defile themselves again with their idols and with vile idols and with all of their transgressions, and I will save them from all of their apostasy by which they sinned,^a and I will cleanse them and they will be for me as a people and I, I will be for them as God.

²⁴“ ‘ “And my servant David will be king over them, and one shepherd will be for all of them, and in my regulations they will go, and my statutes they will observe, and they will do them. ²⁵And they will dwell on the land that I gave to my servant, to Jacob, in which your ancestors dwelled,^b and they will dwell on it, they and their children and the children of their children forever,^c and my servant David will be a leader for them forever.^d ²⁶And I will make with them a covenant of peace; an everlasting covenant^e it will be with them. And I will establish them, and I will cause them to increase, and I will put my sanctuary in the midst of them forever.^f ²⁷And my tabernacle will be with them, and I will be for them as God, and they will be to me as a nation. ²⁸And the nations will know that I, Yahweh, am consecrating Israel when my sanctuary is in the midst of them forever.” ’ ”^g

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Footnotes

nLiterally “to say”
oOr “mortal,” or “son of humankind”
pLiterally “a piece of wood one”
qLiterally “sons/children of Israel”
rOr “for”
sLiterally “as that”
tLiterally “the children of your people”
uLiterally “to say”
vLiterally “sons/children of Israel”
wLiterally “which they went there”
xLiterally “all around”
yLiterally “and king one he will be for all of them to king”
zAccording to the reading tradition (Qere)
aOr “which they sinned by them”
bLiterally “which they dwelt in it your fathers”
cLiterally “until eternity” or “until unlimited time”
dLiterally “to eternity” or “to endless ages”
eLiterally “a covenant of eternity”
fLiterally “to eternity” or “to unlimited ages”
gLiterally “to eternity” or “to unlimited ages”