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.
Their widows will be more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore. At noontime I will send a destroyer against the mothers of young men. I will suddenly bring anguish and terror to them.
“ ‘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.’ ”
Nation of Israel, I’m going to bring a nation from far away to attack you, declares the Lord. It is a nation that has lasted a long time. It is an ancient nation. You don’t know the language of this nation. You can’t understand what its people say.