At that time it shall be said to this people and to Yerushalayim, “A scorching wind of the bare heights blows in the wilderness toward the daughter of My people, not to fan or to cleanse.
And all of us have become as one unclean, and all our righteousnesses are as soiled rags. And all of us fade like a leaf, and our crookednesses, like the wind, have taken us away.
“And you shall say this word to them, ‘Let my eyes flow with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the maiden daughter of my people has been crushed with a mighty blow, with a very severe wound.
Observe! The voice, the cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land, “Is יהוה not in Tsiyon? Is her Sovereign not in her?” “Why have they provoked Me with their carved images, and with foreign worthlessnesses?”
My eyes are spent with tears, My inward parts ferment, My bile has been poured on the ground Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, As children and the infants languish In the streets of the city.
Even jackals have presented their breasts, They have nursed their young. The daughter of my people has become as cruel, As ostriches in the wilderness.
‘But she was uprooted in wrath, she was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried her fruit. Her strong rods were broken and withered, fire consumed them.
“Though he bears fruit among his brothers, an east wind comes, a wind from יהוה comes up from the wilderness, and it dries up his fountain, and his spring becomes dry – it plunders a treasure of all desirable objects.
Therefore they shall be like a morning cloud, and like dew that goes away early, like chaff blown off from a threshing-floor, and like smoke from a window.
“See, I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, who is going through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs.
“His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He shall thoroughly cleanse His threshing-floor, and gather His wheat into the storehouse, but the chaff He shall burn with unquenchable fire.”
“His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He shall thoroughly cleanse His threshing-floor, and gather the wheat into His storehouse, but the chaff He shall burn with unquenchable fire.”