and said to him, “Run, say to that young man: Jerusalem shall be inhabited like unwalled villages because of the multitude of people and animals in it.
Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the open towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, a holiday on which they send gifts of food to one another.
Look on Zion, the city of our appointed festivals! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, an immovable tent whose stakes will never be pulled up and none of whose ropes will be broken.
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”;
See, it is I who have created the smith who blows the fire of coals and produces a weapon fit for its purpose; I have also created the ravager to destroy.
Just as the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will increase the offspring of my servant David and the Levites who minister to me.
You will say, “I will go up against the land of unwalled villages; I will fall upon the quiet people who live in safety, all of them living without walls and having no bars or gates,
young men without physical defect and handsome, versed in every branch of wisdom, endowed with knowledge and insight, and competent to serve in the king’s palace; they were to be taught the literature and language of the Chaldeans.
Therefore, thus says the Lord: I have returned to Jerusalem with compassion; my house shall be built in it, says the Lord of hosts, and a measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem.
Proclaim further: Thus says the Lord of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem.”
On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot on a pile of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves, and they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem.
This shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples who wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet, their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths.