1 Meqabyan (Ethiopian) 24

As for Gideon, when he trusted in the Lord, with few hosts he overcame the myriad hosts that had no number, like the locusts, the hosts of slingers.

Do not trust in strange gods; for there is no other God besides Me, O kings and governors.

For I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the womb of your mother, and made you grow, and fed you, and clothed you; and why do you make excuses and worship a strange god besides Me?

And all this I did for you; and what have you given Me, and what do I require of you, except the salvation of your souls, that you should walk in My law and in My ordinance and in My commandment; and I too will give you the salvation of your souls.

Says the Lord who rules over all: Save your souls from idolatry and divination and sorcery.

For there is the chastisement of the Lord that comes upon those who do these things, and upon those who hearken to them, and upon those who do their will, and upon those who befriend them, and upon those who walk in their commandment.

For peoples shall rise up against you who do not know you and have no mercy on you, and they shall eat the fruit of your toil, if you do not do the will of the Lord who made you, even as His prophets foretold, from Samuel the prophet, and again Ezekiel and Enoch spoke, and Asaph prophesied.

And he said, There shall come fierce men who change their garments, and there is no other law in them but eating and drinking and the adorning of gold and silver, and every deed of violence in which the Lord takes no pleasure.

And they are ready to run into eating and drinking; as soon as they awake from their sleep, from morning until evening they run into evil deeds, and for their feet there is no way of peace, but only shame and ruin in their path.

And they do not know the way of peace, and there is no fear of the Lord before their eyes; a people perverse and fierce, who have no faithfulness and no faith, gluttonous and devouring and drinking and drunken; and without law is their transgression, in lewdness and the shedding of blood and theft and deceit and the seizing of another's goods by iniquity.

And they contend without law and judgment, and there is no shame upon their faces, because they do not fear the Lord who created them.

And they have no shame before the face of a man who beholds them, nor before the face of the grey-haired, nor before the face of the aged; and as soon as they hear of the goods of the world, they make them their own without seeing them with their eyes; and as soon as they see them with their eyes, it seems to them as though they had swallowed them with their mouth, because there is no fear of the Lord before their eyes.

And their governors too are devourers of bribes, and what they say in the morning they do not repeat in the evening, for they are deniers, and there is no uprightness in their mouth.

And their kings too are disturbers, who run into evil, for they despise the cry of the poor and the needy, and do not deliver the stranger from the hand of those who oppress him.

And therefore kings ought not to be tyrants, but to give relief to the stranger and to the oppressed.

But those murderers and rebels, who drink blood and have no compassion on the calf together with its mother, nor on the bird together with her young, because their way is fierce; all that they see and desire they make their own.

And they do not have compassion on the poor and the wretched, but love to gather for themselves and seize another's goods by iniquity; and all that they find they gather, that they may store it in their houses and rejoice in it.

Woe to their souls in the day the Lord lays hold of them in His wrath, because they did not make their ways good in their life; for they perish swiftly, like one who comes forth out of a pit whose mark cannot be found, and who does not return to his house.

And likewise they perish in a moment, in a single instant, when the Lord despises them; they come to an end in their time; for the Lord does not hasten to destroy, but is long-suffering, if they will return to repentance.

But if they do not return to repentance, the Lord destroys them like the ancients who were before them, who did not keep the commandment of the Lord in purity.

And they are eaters of human flesh and drinkers of blood, and there is no fear of the Lord at any time, for they gird themselves with violence to run; as soon as they rise from their bed they do not rest from working iniquity.

To eating and drinking and running into evil and destruction, to ruin the souls of many upon the earth.