“I have stirred him up in righteousness, and all his ways I make straight. He builds My city and lets My exiles go, not for price nor reward,” declares יהוה of hosts.
“Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loosen the tight cords of wrongness, to undo the bands of the yoke, to exempt the oppressed, and to break off every yoke?
Thus said יהוה of hosts, “The children of Yisra’ĕl were oppressed, along with the children of Yehuḏah. And all who took them captive have held them fast, they refused to let them go.
whose burial-sites are set in the sides of the pit, and her assembly is all around her burial-place, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, because they instilled fear in the land of the living.
And I shall stretch out My hand against them and make the land a wasteland, even more waste than the wilderness toward Diḇlah, in all their dwelling places. And they shall know that I am יהוה.’” ’ ”
Ahead of them a fire has consumed, and behind them a flame burns. Before them the land is like the Garden of Ěḏen, and behind them a desert waste. And from them there is no escape.