Through your servants you defy the Lord and say, “With my many chariots I’ll ride up the high mountains, up the slopes of Lebanon. I’ll cut down its tallest cedars and its finest cypresses. I’ll come to its most distant borders and its most fertile forests.
Since you rage against me and your boasting has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle in your mouth. I will make you go back the way you came.
Through your servants you defy the Lord and say, “With my many chariots I’ll ride up the high mountains, up the slopes of Lebanon. I’ll cut down its tallest cedars and its finest cypresses. I’ll come to its most distant heights and its most fertile forests.
Surely wickedness burns like fire. It burns up briars and thorns. It sets the underbrush in the forest on fire, and it whirls upward in clouds of smoke.
“ ‘I will punish you because of the evil things you have done,’ ” declares the Lord. “ ‘I will start a fire in your forests, and it will burn up everything around you.’ ”
“On that day I will make the leaders of Judah like a fire on a pile of wood and like a burning torch among freshly cut straw. They will burn up all the surrounding nations to the right and to the left. But the people of Jerusalem will remain safe in Jerusalem.