Upon every height in the wilderness marauders have appeared. The Lord has a sword that consumes the land from end to end: no peace for any living thing.
What do I see? Are they panicking, falling apart? Their warriors are hammered back, They flee headlong never making a stand. Terror on every side— oracle of the Lord!
Daughter of my people, dress in sackcloth, roll in the ashes. Mourn as for an only child with bitter wailing: “How suddenly the destroyer comes upon us!”
From Dan is heard the snorting of horses; The neighing of stallions shakes the whole land. They come to devour the land and everything in it, the city and its inhabitants.
Listen! the cry of the daughter of my people, far and wide in the land! “Is the Lord no longer in Zion, is her King no longer in her midst?” Why do they provoke me with their idols, with their foreign nonentities?
I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into dirges. I will cover the loins of all with sackcloth and make every head bald. I will make it like the time of mourning for an only child, and its outcome like a day of bitter weeping.