¶Your land is desolate; Your cities are burned with fire; Your fields—strangers are devouring them in your presence; It is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
For You have abandoned Your people, the house of Jacob, Because they are filled with influences from the east, And they are soothsayers like the Philistines, And they strike bargains with the children of foreigners.
Therefore through this, Jacob’s iniquity will be atoned for; And this will be the whole fruit of the turning away of his sin: When he makes all the altar stones like pulverized chalk stones, When Asherim and incense altars will not stand.
Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He said, “Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, Houses are without people, And the land is devastated to desolation,
The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared All the habitations of Jacob. In His wrath He has pulled down The strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground; He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
and you will say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will go against those who dwell quietly, that live securely, all of them living without walls and having no bars or gates,
Therefore a rumbling will arise among your people, And all your fortifications will be destroyed, As Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle, When mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.
Then he answered and spoke to me, saying, “This is the word of Yahweh to Zerubbabel, saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says Yahweh of hosts.