Howl, O gate! Cry, O city! Melt away, O Philistia, all of you! For there is coming a smoke out of the north, and there is no straggler in his ranks and none stands aloof [in Hezekiah's battalions].
For the palace shall be forsaken, the populous city shall be deserted; the hill and the watchtower shall become dens [for wild animals] endlessly, a joy for wild donkeys, a pasture for flocks,
But it [the wrath of the Lord] shall hail, coming down overpoweringly on the forest [the army of the Assyrians], and the capital city shall be utterly humbled and laid prostrate.
I will go before you and level the mountains [to make the crooked places straight]; I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut asunder the bars of iron.
HOW SOLITARY and lonely sits the city [Jerusalem] that was [once] full of people! How like a widow has she become! She who was great among the nations and princess among the provinces has become a tributary [in servitude]!
The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to the solemn assembly or the appointed feasts. All her gates are desolate, her priests sigh and groan, her maidens are grieved and vexed, and she herself is in bitterness.
Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are [exiled] among the nations; the law is no more; her prophets also obtain no vision from the Lord.
For the inhabitant of Maroth [bitterness] writhes in pain [at its losses] and waits anxiously for good, because evil comes down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem.