For the fortified city shall be lonely, a forsaken pasture, left alone and forsaken like a wilderness. The calf shall feed there, and he shall lie there and eat up its branches.
And thorns, nettles and thistles shall go up in her palaces, in its fortresses; and it shall be a home for jackals, a court for daughters of ostriches.
And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned and not hoed; but briers and thorns shall come up. And on the clouds I will command the rain from raining on it.
Instead of the thorn-bush, the fir tree shall come up; instead of the brier, the myrtle shall come up; and it shall be for a name to Jehovah, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
And I said, Until when, O Lord? And He said, Until cities lie desolate without one living in them, and the houses without man, and the land is laid waste, a desolation;
For so says Jehovah, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city, and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah, which are broken down to defend against the siege mounds, and against the sword,
And the high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. The thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars. And they shall say to the mountains, Cover us! and to the hills, Fall on us!
lest I strip her naked and set her out as in the day that she was born, and make her as the wilderness, and place her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.
For, behold, they have gone from destruction; Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess the desirable things of their silver; thorns shall be in their tents.