“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.
“See, he comes up like a lion from the Yardĕn jungle against the home of the strong. But in an instant I shall make him run away from her. And who is the Chosen One, to appoint over her? For who is like Me? And who summons Me? And who is that Shepherd who stands before Me?”
“Yisra’ĕl is a scattered sheep, the lions have driven him away. First the sovereign of Ashshur devoured him, and now, at last, this Neḇuḵaḏretstsar sovereign of Baḇel has broken his bones.”
And the remnant of Ya‛aqoḇ shall be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of a forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, who, if he passes through, shall both tread down and shall tear, and there is no one to deliver.
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?