So the patriarchal leaders of Judah and Benjamin, along with the kohanim and the Levites—everyone whose spirit God had stirred up—arose to go up to build the House of Adonai in Jerusalem.
Then I said to them, “You see the bad situation we are in: Jerusalem is desolate and its gates have been burnt. Come! Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we will no longer be a disgrace.”
I am sending it against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My fury I am commissioning it, to take spoil and plunder, to trample them down like mud in the streets.
For your waste and desolate places and your destroyed land will now be surely too small for the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away.
But you forgot Adonai your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. Are you in constant dread all day because of the fury of the oppressor as he makes ready to destroy? But where is the fury of the oppressor?
“Never again will there be a briar pricking at the house of Israel or a piercing thorn from any around them who scorn them. They will know that I am the Lord Adonai.”