And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, What do these feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they finish in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?
That confirms the word of his servant, and performs the counsel of his messengers; that says to Jerusalem, you shall be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, you shall be built, and I will raise up its waste places:
For, lo, I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, says the LORD; and they shall come, and they shall set everyone his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all its walls round about, and against all the cities of Judah.
And it shall come to pass, when you shall show this people all these words, and they shall say unto you, Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?
Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and its kings, and its princes, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse; as it is this day;
Micah the Moresthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus says the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.
Why have you prophesied in the name of the LORD, saying, This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate without an inhabitant? And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the LORD.
Behold, I will command, says the LORD, and cause them to return to this city; and they shall fight against it, and take it, and burn it with fire: and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without an inhabitant.
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; You have seen all the destruction that I have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and, behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwells in them,
For out of the north there comes up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell in it: they shall move, they shall depart, both man and beast.
The roads to Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.
The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied: he has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought them down to the ground: he has polluted the kingdom and its princes.
Therefore I will make Samaria like a heap in the field, and a place for planting of a vineyard: and I will pour down its stones into the valley, and I will uncover her foundations.
Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the house like the high places of the forest.
For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and you walk in their counsels; that I should make you a desolation, and your inhabitants a hissing: therefore you shall bear the reproach of my people.
And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor does it bear, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of demons, and the haunt of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.