Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
Therefore you have forsaken your people the house of Jacob, because they are filled from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves with the children of strangers.
By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be cleansed away; and this is all the result to take away his sin; when he makes all the stones of the altar as chalk stones that are beaten in pieces, the groves and images shall not stand again.
Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be completely desolate,
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.
And you shall say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to those who are at rest, who dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
Therefore shall a tumult arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be laid waste, as Shalman laid waste Beth-arbel in the day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.
Then he answered and spoke to me, saying, This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts.