He has laid waste his booth like a garden, laid in ruins his meeting place; the Lord has made Zion forget festival and Sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.
I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer reproach.
The roads to Zion mourn, for none come to the festival; all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; her virgins have been afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly.
The Lord himself has scattered them; he will regard them no more; no honor was shown to the priests, no favor to the elders.
and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.”
He despised the oath in breaking the covenant, and behold, he gave his hand and did all these things; he shall not escape.
And the prince who is among them shall lift his baggage upon his shoulder at dusk, and shall go out. They shall dig through the wall to bring him out through it. He shall cover his face, that he may not see the land with his eyes. And I will spread my net over him, and he shall be taken in my snare. And I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, yet he shall not see it, and he shall die there.
Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders.
The breath of our nostrils, the Lord's anointed, was captured in their pits, of whom we said, “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.”
He put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and the king of Babylon took him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death. In the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month—that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan the captain of the bodyguard, who served the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord, and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down all the walls around Jerusalem. And Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive some of the poorest of the people and the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the artisans.
Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.
Your holy people held possession for a little while; our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary.
Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling.
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city.
You have breached all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins.
Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
Unless otherwise indicated, all content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Contact me: openbibleinfo (at) gmail.com.