‘See the siege mounds! They have come to the city to take it. And the city has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans who fight against it, because of the sword and the scarcity of food and the pestilence. And what You have spoken has come about, and look, You see it!
For thus said יהוה of hosts, “Cut down her trees, and cast up a siege mound against Yerushalayim. She is the city to be punished, in whose midst there is only oppression.
יהוה has cast off His altar, He has rejected His set-apart place, He has delivered the walls of her palaces Into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the House of יהוה As on the day of an appointed time.
“In his right hand shall be the divination for Yerushalayim: to set up battering rams, to call for a slaughter, to lift the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to heap up a siege mound, to build a wall.
‘With the sword he shall slay your daughter villages in the fields. And he shall heap up a siege mound against you, and shall build a wall against you, and shall raise a large shield against you,
and shall lay siege against it, and build a siege wall against it, and heap up a mound against it, and set camps against it, and place battering rams against it all around.
“Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you do destroy and cut down, to build siege-works against the city that is fighting against you, until it falls.
