‘See, I am commanding,’ declares יהוה, ‘and shall bring them back to this city, and they shall fight against it and take it and burn it with fire. And I shall make the cities of Yehuḏ
Therefore He brought against them the sovereign of the Chaldeans, and he slew their young men with the sword in the House of their set-apart place, and had no compassion on young man or maiden, on the aged or the weak – He gave all into his hand.
“Have you not heard long ago how I made it, from days of old, that I formed it? Now I have brought it about, that you should be for crushing walled cities into heaps of ruins.
Then I said, “יהוה, until when?” And He answered, “Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, and the houses are without a man, and the land is laid waste, a ruin,
“And the Chaldeans who fight against this city shall come and set fire to this city and burn it, with the houses on whose roofs they burned incense to Baʽ
‘And they are going to surrender all your wives and children to the Chaldeans, and you yourself shall not escape from their hand, but be taken by the hand of the sovereign of Baḇ
“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.
“And יהוה could no longer bear it, because of the evil of your deeds and because of the abominations which you did. Therefore your land is a ruin, an object of astonishment, a curse, and without an inhabitant, as it is this day.
and he burned the House of יהוה, and the sovereign’s house, and all the houses of Yerushalayim, and all the houses of the great men, he burned with fire.
Then the city wall was breached, and all the men of battle fled and went out of the city at night by way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the sovereign’s garden, while the Chaldeans were near the city all around. And they went by way of the desert plain.
How alone she sits, The city once great with people! Like a widow she has become, One great among the nations! A princess among provinces has become a slave!
“Because with falsehood you have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad. And you have strengthened the hands of the wrong, so that he does not turn from his evil way, to keep him alive.
“And I scattered them with a storm wind among all the gentiles which they had not known. And the land was laid waste behind them, no one passing through or returning, for they made the pleasant land a waste.”