Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”
I answered the king: “May the king live forever! How could I not look sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins, and its gates consumed by fire?”
Against an impious nation I send him, and against a people under my wrath I order him To seize plunder, carry off loot, and to trample them like the mud of the street.
Your covenant with death shall be canceled and your pact with Sheol shall not stand. When the raging flood passes through, you shall be beaten down by it.
And now, tell this to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am fashioning evil against you and making a plan. Return, all of you, from your evil way; reform your ways and your deeds.
Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I will turn against you the weapons with which you are fighting the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans who besiege you outside the walls. These weapons I will pile up in the midst of this city,
All my valiant warriors my Lord has cast away; He proclaimed a feast against me to crush my young men; My Lord has trodden in the wine press virgin daughter Judah.
He laid waste his booth like a garden, destroyed his shrine; The Lord has blotted out in Zion feast day and sabbath, Has scorned in fierce wrath king and priest.
I heard a holy one speaking, and another said to whichever one it was that spoke, “How long shall the events of this vision last concerning the daily sacrifice, the desolating sin, the giving over of the sanctuary and the host for trampling?”
I will lay waste her vines and fig trees, of which she said, “These are the fees my lovers have given me”; I will turn them into rank growth and wild animals shall devour them.
They will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken as captives to all the Gentiles; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. The Coming of the Son of Man.
But exclude the outer court of the temple; do not measure it, for it has been handed over to the Gentiles, who will trample the holy city for forty-two months.