Your land is laid waste, your cities are burned with fire, strangers devour your land in your presence. And it is laid waste, as overthrown by strangers.
When its twigs are dry, they are broken off, women come and set them on fire. For it is a people of no understanding, therefore He who made them has no compassion on them, and He who formed them shows them no favour.
And no one recalls it to his heart, nor is there knowledge nor understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire, and I have also baked bread on its coals; I have roasted meat and eaten it. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Should I fall down before a log of wood?”
“And you shall say in your heart, ‘Who has brought forth these for me, since I am bereaved and barren, an exile, and wandering to and fro? And who reared them? See, I was left alone – from where did these come?’ ”
Therefore thus said the Master יהוה, “See, My servants eat, but you hunger; see, My servants drink, but you thirst; see, My servants rejoice, but you are put to shame;
‘If I go out to the field, then see those slain with the sword! And if I enter the city, then see those sick from scarcity of food! For both prophet and priest go about in a land they do not know.’ ”
“And their nobles have sent their little ones for water, they went to the cisterns and found no water, they returned with their vessels empty. They were put to shame, and blushed and covered their heads.
“Even a stork in the heavens knows her appointed times. And a turtledove, and a swallow, and a thrush observe the time of their coming. But My people do not know the right-ruling of יהוה.
“My people have perished for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being priest for Me. Since you have forgotten the Torah of your Elohim, I also forget your children.
and dash you to the ground, and your children within you. And they shall not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
For they choose to have this hidden from them: that the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by the Word of Elohim,