“Against a defiled nation I send him, and against the people of My wrath I command him to seize the spoil, to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mud of the streets.
For this is what יהוה has said to me, “As a lion roars, and a young lion over his prey, though a band of shepherds is called out against him, he is not afraid of their voice nor disturbed by their noise, so יהוה of hosts shall come down to fight upon Mount Tsiyon and upon its hill.
But this is a people robbed and plundered, all of them are snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses. They have become a prey, with no one to deliver – for plunder, and no one to say, “Restore!”
“So they shall be to you with whom you have laboured, your merchants from your youth. They shall wander, each one his own way, there is none to save you.
“A lion has come up from his bush, and the destroyer of nations is on his way. He has set out from his place to make your land a ruin. Your cities are laid waste, without inhabitant.
Where is the den of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion, the lioness and the lion’s cub walked, with no one to disturb them?