“Look, I will make you a threshing sledge, new, with sharp, double-edged spikes. You will thresh the mountains and grind them up, and will make the hills like chaff.
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.
How long will the land mourn and the grass of all the field wither? Because those living in it are evil, beasts and birds are swept away. For they said, “He cannot see our end.”
They did not ask ‘Where is Adonai, who brought us up from the land of Egypt and led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and rifts, through a land of drought and distress, through a land where no one travels, where no one lives?’
For the land is full of adulterers. The land mourns because of a curse. Pastures of the wilderness are dry. Their running is evil, and their might is not right.
For a nation comes up against her out of the land of the north —it will desolate her land. No one will dwell there— they have fled, gone, both man and beast.”
Over these things I weep. My eyes overflow with water. For far from me is a comforter, who might refresh my soul. My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed.”
My eyes are filled with tears. My stomach is in torment. My heart is poured out on the ground over the destruction of the daughter of my people— as young children and infants languish in the city squares.
I will make the land a desolation and a horror. The pride of her power will cease. The mountains of Israel will be desolate, so that no one will pass through.’
In all your dwellings the cities will be desolate. The high places will be deserted. Your altars will be laid waste and made desolate, your idols broken and destroyed, your sun pillars cut down and your works blotted out.
Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone dwelling in it will languish along with the beasts of the field and the flying creatures of the sky— even the fish of the sea will be removed.
Gird yourselves and weep, kohanim! Howl, ministers of the altar! Come, lie in sackcloth all night, ministers of my God. For grain and drink offering are withheld from the House of your God.
Therefore thus said Adonai Elohei-Tzva’ot, my Lord: “There will be wailing in all plazas and in all streets. They will say: ‘Alas! Alas!’ The farmer will be called to mourning along with those who know the lamentation song.
In that day He will lift up a parable for you, and there will be wailing lamentation, saying: “We have been utterly ruined! He changes the portion of my people. How He removes it from me! To the faithless He apportions our fields!”
Therefore, because of you Zion will become a plowed field. Yes, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins, and the Temple Mount will become a high place in a forest.