My people planted wheat, but they harvested thorns. They worked until they became sick, but they gained nothing by it. They were disappointed by their harvests because of the burning anger of the Lord.
How long will the land mourn? How long will the plants in every field remain dried up? The animals and the birds are dying, because people are wicked. They think that God doesn’t know what they are doing.
In the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, I will banish the sounds of joy and happiness and the sounds of brides and grooms, because the land will be a wasteland.”
I will cry and weep for the mountains. I will sing a funeral song for the pastures in the wilderness. They are destroyed so that no one can travel through them. No one can hear the sound of cattle. Birds and cattle have fled. They are gone.
The Lord rejected his altar and disowned his holy place. He handed the walls of Zion’s palaces over to its enemies. The enemies made noise in the Lord’s temple as though it were a festival day.
Because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a pile of rubble, and the temple mountain will become a worship site covered with trees.
Their silver and their gold will not be able to rescue them on the day of the Lord’s overflowing fury. The whole earth will be consumed by his fiery anger, because he will put an end, a frightening end, to those who live on earth.