For the fenced city `is' alone, A habitation cast out and forsaken as a wilderness, There doth the calf delight, And there it lieth down, And hath consumed its branches.
And gone up her palaces have thorns, Nettle and bramble `are' in her fortresses, And it hath been a habitation of dragons, A court for daughters of an ostrich.
And I make it a waste, It is not pruned, nor arranged, And gone up have brier and thorn, And on the thick clouds I lay a charge, From raining upon it rain.
Instead of the thorn come up doth fir, Instead of the brier come up doth myrtle, And it hath been to Jehovah for a name, For a sign age-during -- it is not cut off!
And I say, `Till when, O Lord?' And He saith, `Surely till cities have been wasted without inhabitant, And houses without man, And the ground be wasted -- a desolation,
For thus said Jehovah, God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city, and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah, that are broken down for the mounts, and for the tool;
And destroyed have been high places of Aven, the sin of Israel. Thorn and bramble go up on their altars, And they have said to hills, Cover us, And to heights, Fall upon us.
Lest I strip her naked. And have set her up as `in' the day of her birth, And have made her as a wilderness, And have set her as a dry land, And have put her to death with thirst.
For, lo, they have gone because of destruction, Egypt gathereth them, Moph burieth them, The desirable things of their silver, Nettles possess them -- a thorn `is' in their tents.