Lord, look and consider to whom you have done this. Should women eat their own children, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the Lord’s sanctuary?
If I go out to the field, look #– #those slain by the sword! If I enter the city, look #– #those ill from famine! For both prophet and priest travel to a land they do not know.
‘This is what the Lord says: “Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine, and plague, but whoever surrenders to the Chaldeans will live. He will retain his life like the spoils of war and will live.”
Then the angel of the Lord went out and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!
‘Therefore, this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: He will not enter this city, shoot an arrow here, come before it with a shield, or build up a siege ramp against it.
There will be nothing to do except crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. In all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is still raised to strike.
For the palace will be deserted, the busy city abandoned. The hill and the watchtower will become barren places for ever, the joy of wild donkeys, and a pasture for flocks,
How she sits alone, the city once crowded with people! She who was great among the nations has become like a widow. The princess among the provinces has been put to forced labour.
This is the jubilant city that lives in security, that says to herself: I exist, and there is no one else. What a desolation she has become, a place for wild animals to lie down! Everyone who passes by her scoffs and shakes his fist.