You, O king, although you feel safely nested there in your palace of cedar pillars from Lebanon, you will be in pain and will groan like a woman giving birth!”
Yes, listen to what Yahweh thinks about Judah’s royal palace: “You are as glorious as Gilead to me, as beautiful as the summit of Lebanon; but I swear that I will make you as empty as a desert— like a ghost town.
Your proud heart has deceived you. Your pride rests in thinking everyone is afraid of you. But I, Yahweh, say to you whose home is in the rocky cliffs, who live high on the mountaintop, though you make your nest as high as the eagle’s, I will topple you from your high place!
Yahweh declares: I will fight against you, Jerusalem, you who are enthroned above the valley, a rock over the plain. Those who say, ‘Who would dare come here and attack us and penetrate the defenses of our city?’
I hear the sound of voices echoing from the barren hills, the bitter weeping of the sons of Israel pleading for mercy because they lost their moral way and have forgotten Yahweh their God.
Tell them to guess the meaning of what I, Yahweh, have to say to them: “There once was this great eagle with huge wings, whose wingspan was very wide, with many beautiful colored feathers around its head. One day he came to the Lebanon Mountains, and taking a new branch of a cedar tree,