For the fortified city will be desolate, pastures deserted and abandoned like a wilderness. Calves will graze there, and there they will spread out and strip its branches.
‘Micah the Moreshite prophesied in the days of King Hezekiah of Judah and said to all the people of Judah, “This is what the Lord of Armies says: Zion will be ploughed like a field, Jerusalem will become ruins, and the temple’s mountain will be a high thicket.”
On that day their strong cities will be like the abandoned woods and mountaintops that were abandoned because of the Israelites; there will be desolation.
therefore, mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. This is what the Lord God says to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys, to the desolate ruins and abandoned cities, which have become plunder and a mockery to the rest of the nations all around.
The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the appointed festivals. All her gates are deserted; her priests groan, her young women grieve, and she herself is bitter.
For you have turned the city into a pile of rocks, a fortified city into ruins; the fortress of barbarians is no longer a city; it will never be rebuilt.
You will not go to all the hills that were once tilled with a hoe, for fear of the thorns and briars. Those hills will be places for oxen to graze and for sheep to trample.
Then you will say within yourself, “Who fathered these for me? I was deprived of my children and unable to conceive, exiled and wandering – but who brought them up? See, I was left by myself – but these, where did they come from? ” ’