And he spoke before his kindred and the army of Samaria, and said, What are these feeble Jews doing? 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?
And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is drawing near, and her days shall not be prolonged.
And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be a habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
Who confirms the word of his servant, and performs the counsel of his messengers; who says to Jerusalem, You shall be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, You shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof:
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 every one his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all the walls thereof round about, and against all the cities of Judah.
And it shall come to pass, when you shall tell this people all these words, and they shall say to 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?
That is, Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and the kings thereof, and the princes thereof, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse; as it is this day;
Micah the Morasthite 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, and the mountain of the house like 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 evil 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 therein: they shall go, they shall depart, both man and beast.
The ways of Zion 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 the princes thereof.
Therefore I will make Samaria like a heap of the field, and like a place for planting a vineyard: and I will pour down her 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 the inhabitants thereof 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 bears, 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 fury:
And he cried out mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.