He said in the presence of his associates and of the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it by themselves? Will they offer sacrifice? Will they finish it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish—burned ones at that?”
who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the prediction of his messengers; who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,” and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt, and I will raise up their ruins”;
For now I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, says the Lord, and they shall come, and all of them shall set their thrones at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its surrounding walls and against all the cities of Judah.
And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?”
Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a desolation and a waste, an object of hissing and of cursing, as they are today;
“Micah of Moresheth, who prophesied during the days of King Hezekiah of Judah, said to all the people of Judah: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins and the mountain of the house a wooded height.’
Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” And all the people gathered around Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.
I am going to command, says the Lord, and will bring them back to this city, and they will fight against it and take it and burn it with fire. The towns of Judah I will make a desolation without inhabitant.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You yourselves have seen all the disaster that I have brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Look at them; today they are a desolation, without an inhabitant in them,
For out of the north a nation has come up against her; it shall make her land a desolation, and no one shall live in it; both humans and animals shall flee away.
The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter.
The Lord has destroyed without mercy all the dwellings of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of daughter Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers.
Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations.
For you have kept the statutes of Omri and all the works of the house of Ahab, and you have followed their counsels. Therefore I will make you a desolation and your inhabitants an object of hissing, so you shall bear the scorn of my people.
all its soil burned out by sulfur and salt, nothing planted, nothing sprouting, unable to support any vegetation, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his fierce anger—
He called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.