I will devastate this city. It will become something to hiss at. Everyone who goes by it will be stunned and hiss with contempt at all the disasters that happen to it.
Everyone passing by this temple, as impressive as it is, will be appalled. They will gasp and ask, ‘Why did the Lord do these things to this land and this temple?’
Jerusalem and the cities of Judah as well as its kings and officials. When they drank from it, they became wastelands and ruins, something ridiculed and cursed, until today.
I take an oath on myself, declares the Lord, that Bozrah will become a pile of rubble. It will become something horrifying, ridiculed, ruined, and cursed. All its cities will lie in ruins permanently.
No one will live in Babylon because of the Lord’s anger. It will be completely abandoned. Everyone who passes by Babylon will be horrified and hiss at all its wounds.
You have kept Omri’s laws and all the practices of the descendants of Ahab, and you have followed their advice. That is why I will ruin you. Your people will be ridiculed. You will bear the disgrace of my people.”
Is this the arrogant city? Is this the city that used to live securely, the city that used to think to itself, “I’m the only one, and no one else exists but me”? What a wasteland it is now, a resting place for wild animals! All who pass by it will hiss and make an obscene gesture.
Then the next generation of your children and foreigners who come from distant countries will see the plagues that have happened in this land and the diseases the Lord sent here.