When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off. The women will come and set them on fire, for they are a people of no understanding. Therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them, and he who formed them will show them no favor.
Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: As the vine tree among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so will I give the inhabitants of Yerushalayim.
Fire is gone out of the rods of its branches, it has devoured its fruit, so that there is in it no strong rod to be a scepter to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.
*I have overthrown some of you, as when God overthrew Sedom and `Amorah, and you were like a burning stick plucked out of the fire; yet you haven't returned to me,* says the LORD.
*For, behold, the day comes, it burns as a furnace; and all the proud, and all who work wickedness, will be stubble; and the day that comes will burn them up,* says the LORD of Armies, *that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.*