Highways are empty, ¹  there are no travelers. ²  Treaties are broken, ³  witnesses are despised, ⁴  human life is treated with disrespect. ⁵ 

They will lay it waste. It will lie parched ¹  and empty before me. The whole land will be laid waste. But no one living in it will pay any heed. ² 

After I vent my wrath on it Babylon will be uninhabited. ¹  It will be totally desolate. All who pass by will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn because of all the disasters that have happened to it. ² 

No human foot will pass through it, and no animal’s foot will pass through it; it will be uninhabited for forty years.

The grains of seed ¹  have shriveled beneath their shovels. ²  Storehouses have been decimated and granaries have been torn down, for the grain has dried up.

“But surely I gave ¹  you no food to eat in any of your cities; you lacked food everywhere you live. ²  Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking!

When ¹  you pray, do not babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard.

For if they become heirs by the law, faith is empty and the promise is nullified. ¹ 

It is the same for you. If you do not speak clearly with your tongue, how will anyone know what is being said? For you will be speaking into the air.

So I say this, and insist ¹  in the Lord, that you no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility ²  of their thinking. ³ 

Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition ¹  or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself.

O Timothy, protect what has been entrusted to you. Avoid ¹  the profane chatter and absurdities ²  of so-called “knowledge.” ³ 

Then ¹  I heard a loud voice from the temple declaring to the seven angels: “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls containing God’s wrath.” ² 

It will be like a hungry man dreaming that he is eating, only to awaken and find that his stomach is empty. ¹  It will be like a thirsty man dreaming that he is drinking, only to awaken and find that he is still weak and his thirst unquenched. ²  So it will be for the horde from all the nations that fight against Mount Zion.

But you even break off ¹  piety, ²  and hinder ³  meditation ⁴  before God.

He has neither children nor descendants ¹  among his people, no survivor in those places he once stayed. ² 

to cause it to rain on an uninhabited land, ¹  a desert where there are no human beings, ² 

Rise up, Lord! ¹  Don’t let men be defiant! ²  May the nations be judged in your presence!

He abandoned ¹  the sanctuary at Shiloh, the tent where he lived among men.

and I saw among the naive – I discerned among the youths ¹  – a young man ²  who lacked wisdom. ³