Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
For the palace will be forsaken. The populous city will be deserted. The hill and the watchtower will be for dens forever, a delight for wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks;
For thus says the LORD concerning the house of the king of Yehudah: You are Gil`ad to me, [and] the head of Levanon; [yet] surely I will make you a wilderness, [and] cities which are not inhabited.
A lion is gone up from his thicket, and a destroyer of nations; he is on his way, he is gone forth from his place, to make your land desolate, that your cities be laid waste, without inhabitant.
Thus says the LORD of Armies, the God of Yisra'el: You have seen all the evil that I have brought on Yerushalayim, and on all the cities of Yehudah; and behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwells therein,
In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your incense altars may be hewn down, and your works may be abolished.
Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to that certain one who spoke, How long shall be the vision [concerning] the continual [burnt offering], and the disobedience that makes desolate, to give both the sanctuary and the army to be trodden under foot?
In that day they will take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, saying, 'We are utterly ruined! My people's possession is divided up. Indeed he takes it from me and assigns our fields to traitors!'*
It shall happen that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you, so the LORD will rejoice over you to cause you to perish, and to destroy you; and you shall be plucked from off the land where you go in to possess it.