Your country has become waste; your towns are burned with fire; as for your land, it is overturned before your eyes, made waste and overcome by men from strange lands.
For you, O Lord, have given up your people, the family of Jacob, because they are full of the evil ways of the east, and make use of secret arts like the Philistines, and are friends with the children of strange countries.
So by this will the sin of Jacob be covered, and this is all the fruit of taking away his punishment; when all the stones of the altar are crushed together, so that the wood pillars and the sun-images will not be put up again.
Then I said, Lord, how long? And he said in answer, Till the towns are waste and unpeopled, and the houses have no men, and the land becomes completely waste,
The Lord has given up to destruction all the living-places of Jacob without pity; pulling down in his wrath the strong places of the daughter of Judah, stretching out on the earth the wounded, even her king and her rulers.
And you will say, I will go up to the land of small unwalled towns; I will go to those who are quiet, living, all of them, without fear of danger, without walls or locks or doors:
So a great outcry will go up from among your people, and all your strong places will be broken, as Beth-arbel was broken by Shalman in the day of war, as the mother was broken on the rocks with her children.