‘King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty dish; he has swallowed me like a sea monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies; he has vomited me out.
therefore, prophesy and say, “This is what the Lord God says: Because they have made you desolate and have trampled you from every side, so that you became a possession for the rest of the nations and an object of people’s gossip and slander,
All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, ‘We have swallowed her up. This is the day we have waited for! We have lived to see it.’
The Lord is like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel. He swallowed up all its palaces and destroyed its fortified cities. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation within Daughter Judah.
Without compassion the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In his wrath he has demolished the fortified cities of Daughter Judah. He brought them to the ground and defiled the kingdom and its leaders.
Israel is a stray lamb, chased by lions. The first who devoured him was the king of Assyria; the last who crushed his bones was King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
On all the rooftops of Moab and in her public squares, everyone is mourning because I have shattered Moab like a jar no one wants.’ This is the Lord’s declaration.
Its collapse will be like the shattering of a potter’s jar, crushed to pieces, so that not even a fragment of pottery will be found among its shattered remains – no fragment large enough to take fire from a hearth or scoop water from a cistern.’
Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known.
The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins.
Wail, you shepherds, and cry out. Roll in the dust, you leaders of the flock. Because the days of your slaughter have come, you will fall and become shattered like a precious vase.