1Therefore this commandment is for you Priests 2If you will not hear and if you will not set in your heart to give honor to my name, says LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts, I shall send against you a curse and I shall curse your blessings, because you are not laying it into your heart 3Behold, I rebuke the seed of the land and I shall scatter dung on your faces and dung on your feasts and I shall remove you with it 4And you shall know that I sent you this commandment that my covenant would be with Levi, says LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts 5My covenant was with him; life and peace I have given to him. He was in awe of me and from before my name he was shaken 6The law of truth was in his mouth and evil was not found in his lips; in peace and in rightness he walked with me and he turned many from evil 7Because the lips of the Priest preserve knowledge and they request the Law from his mouth, because he is the Messenger of LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts 8But you have turned from the way and you have subverted many from the Law and you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts 9Also I have set you despised and humiliated among all people, because you have not kept my ways and you have shown favoritism in the law

10Do not we all have one Father, or has not one God created us? Why are we acting treacherously, each man with his brother, and we are profaning the covenant of our fathers? 11Yehuda has been treacherous and defilement has been done in Israel and in Jerusalem, because Yehuda has defiled the holiness of LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts, and has loved and has worshiped foreign gods 12LORD JEHOVAH shall destroy the man who will do this, and his son and the son of his son from the tents of Yaqob, and he shall have no one who brings an offering to LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts

13And this is another thing that you have done: you have covered over the house of LORD JEHOVAH with tears and in weeping and groaning, because he does not return for your offerings, and does not receive to himself pleasure from your hands 14And if you say: “Why?”, it is because LORD JEHOVAH was witness between you and the wife of your youth that you have been treacherous to her, and she is your companion and the wife of your covenant 15Was there not one man and the remainder of the spirits was his? One seeks seed from God. Watch over your spirit and a man shall not be unfaithful with the wife of his youth 16LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts God of Israel says, and no one shall hide evil in his cloak. LORD JEHOVAH of Hosts says: “Be aware in your spirit, and you shall not be treacherous

17You have wearied LORD JEHOVAH with your words, and if you say: ”By what have we wearied him? ”, it is in that you say that everyone who does evil is good in the eyes of LORD JEHOVAH, and he is pleased with them; else where is the God who judges judgment?