They burnt the house of God, and broke down the wall of Yerushalayim, and burnt all the palaces of it with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels of it.
Though this house is so high, yet shall everyone who passes by it be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why has the LORD done thus to this land, and to this house?
Thus says the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil on this place, and on the inhabitants of it, even all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Yehudah.
then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.
They said to me, The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Yerushalayim also is broken down, and the gates of it are burned with fire.
I said to the king, Let the king live forever: why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies waste, and the gates of it are consumed with fire?
I will lay it a wasteland. It won't be pruned nor hoed, but it will grow briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.*
For I have set my face on this city for evil, and not for good, says the LORD: it shall be given into the hand of the king of Bavel, and he shall burn it with fire.
I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, says the LORD; and I will kindle a fire in her forest, and it shall devour all that is round about her.
and the Kasdim, who fight against this city, shall come and set this city on fire, and burn it, with the houses, on whose roofs they have offered incense to Ba`al, and poured out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.
therefore will I do to the house which is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh.
Therefore Tziyon for your sake will be plowed like a field, and Yerushalayim will become heaps of rubble, and the mountain of the temple like the high places of a forest.
But my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, didn't they overtake your fathers? *Then they repented and said, 'Just as the LORD of Armies determined to do to us, according to our ways, and according to our practices, so he has dealt with us.'*