For thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor, it is time to thresh her; yet a little while and the time of her harvest will come.
For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, then He shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches.
Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground; there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans. For you shall no more be called tender and delicate.
Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they have threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron.
Arise and thresh, daughter of Zion, for I will make your horn iron; your hoofs I will make bronze, and you will shatter many peoples. I will devote their pillage to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.
Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up the weeds first and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”