Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, or disappointed, for I am calling upon You; let the wicked be put to shame, let them be silent in Sheol (the place of the dead).
You drove out the nations with Your hand and it was Your power that gave [Israel] a home by rooting out the [heathen] peoples, but [Israel] You spread out.
He drove out the nations also before [Israel] and allotted their land as a heritage, measured out and partitioned; and He made the tribes of Israel to dwell in the tents of those dispossessed.
Many shepherds [of an invading host] have destroyed My vineyard, they have trampled My portion underfoot; they have made My pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.
Yet I had planted you [O house of Israel] a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned into degenerate shoots of wild vine alien to Me?
Therefore thus says the Lord God: Like the wood of the grapevine among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so will I give up the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
And it grew and became a spreading vine of low [not Davidic] stature, whose branches turned [in submission] toward him, and its roots remained under and subject to him [the king of Babylon]; so it became a vine and brought forth branches and shot forth leafy twigs.
Your mother [the mother-city Jerusalem] was like a vine [like you, Zedekiah, and in your blood] planted by the waters; it was fruitful and full of branches by reason of abundant water. [II Kings 24:17; Ezek. 17:7.]
Our forefathers in turn brought it [this tent of witness] in [with them into the land] with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations which God drove out before the face of our forefathers. [So it remained here] until the time of David, [Deut. 32:49; Josh. 3:14-17.]
As for all the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon to Misrephoth-maim, even all the Sidonians, I will Myself drive them out from before the Israelites; only allot the land to Israel for an inheritance, as I have commanded you.