¹He died leaving his children who were yet small, and they grew up even as their father had taught them. They kept the order of their house and cared for all their kindred; they made not the poor to cry, nor the widows, nor the fatherless.

²They feared the LORD and gave alms unto the poor. They kept all the charges their father spake unto them. They comforted the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, being unto them as mother and father. They rescued them from the hands of those that wronged them and gave them rest from all the tumult and sorrow they found.

³And they lived five years while doing these things.

⁴After this, the Chaldean king, Tseerutsaydan, came. He laid waste their whole country, took captive the children of Meqabees, and destroyed all their villages.

⁵He plundered all their substance. The invaders walked steadfastly in all manner of evil and iniquity—in adultery, reviling, and covetousness, thinking not of their Creator. They that walked not by the Law of God and His Commandment, and who worshipped idols, seized them and carried them away unto their own country.

⁶They did eat that which a beast had torn, and blood, and carcasses—whatsoever a scavenger slayeth and casteth away, all that the LORD loveth not. They had no ordinance from the true Commandments written in the Law.

⁷They knew not the LORD their Creator, who brought them forth from their mothers' wombs and fed them that which was due, and who was their Healer.

⁸They married their aunts and the wives of their fathers; they turned unto robbery, wickedness, iniquity, and adultery. They have no ordinance in the time of Judgment. They work all manner of evil; they marry their aunts and their sisters and have no Law.

⁹All their paths are dark and slippery, and their work is transgression and adultery.

¹⁰But the children of Meqabees kept their Ordinance; they would not eat that which a scavenger slew nor that which was found dead. They would not do the works of the children of the Chaldeans, for a multitude of their works are evil and were not written in this book—works wrought by transgressors, doubters, malefactors, and betrayers, wholly filled with robbery and iniquity like unto the children of the heathen.

¹¹All the works which the LORD God loveth were not found among them.

¹²Furthermore, they would worship an idol called Baal-Peor; they trusted in it as though it were the LORD their Creator, though it was deaf and dumb. For it is an idol wrought by the hand of man; it is the work of a smith who worketh silver and gold—it hath neither breath nor knowledge, and it hath nothing whereby it can see or hear.

¹³It doth not eat or drink.

¹⁴It doth not kill or save.

¹⁵It doth not plant or uproot.

¹⁶It doth not harm its adversary nor profit its friend.

¹⁷It doth not impoverish or honour.

¹⁸It is a snare that leadeth astray the slothful Chaldeans; yet it doth not chastise or forgive.