Sounds of violence ¹  will no longer be heard in your land, or the sounds of ²  destruction and devastation within your borders. You will name your walls, ‘Deliverance,’ and your gates, ‘Praise.’

I made Jerusalem ¹  and the cities of Judah, its kings and its officials drink it. ²  I did it so Judah would become a ruin. I did it so Judah, its kings, and its officials would become an object ³  of horror and of hissing scorn, an example used in curses. ⁴  Such is already becoming the case! ⁵ 

Set up a gravestone for Moab, for it will certainly be laid in ruins! ¹  Its cities will be laid waste and become uninhabited.”

“Hazor will become a permanent wasteland, a place where only jackals live. ¹  No one will live there. No human being will settle in it.” ² 

For a nation from the north ¹  will attack Babylon. It will lay her land waste. People and animals will flee out of it. No one will inhabit it.’

So he said to me, “All right then, I will substitute cow’s manure instead of human excrement. You will cook your food over it.”

“Son of man, the house of Israel has become slag to me. All of them are like bronze, tin, iron, and lead in the furnace; ¹  they are the worthless slag of silver.

Therefore the land will mourn, and all its inhabitants will perish. ¹  The wild animals, ²  the birds of the sky, and even the fish in the sea will perish.

Egypt will be desolate and Edom will be a desolate wilderness, because of the violence they did to the people of Judah, ¹  in whose land they shed innocent blood.

Their wealth will be stolen and their houses ruined! They will not live in the houses they have built, nor will they drink the wine from the vineyards they have planted.

because in a single hour such great wealth has been destroyed!” ¹  And every ship’s captain, ²  and all who sail along the coast ³  – seamen, and all who ⁴  make their living from the sea, stood a long way off

so that he may initiate a search of the records ¹  of his predecessors ²  and discover in those records ³  that this city is rebellious ⁴  and injurious to both kings and provinces, producing internal revolts ⁵  from long ago. ⁶  It is for this very reason that this city was destroyed.

The destroyer is as good as dead, ¹  you who have not been destroyed! The deceitful one is as good as dead, ²  the one whom others have not deceived! When you are through destroying, you will be destroyed; when you finish ³  deceiving, others will deceive you!

All her carved idols will be smashed to pieces; all her metal cult statues will be destroyed by fire. ¹  I will make a waste heap ²  of all her images. Since ³  she gathered the metal ⁴  as a prostitute collects her wages, the idols will become a prostitute’s wages again.” ⁵ 

Then the priest will put the woman under the oath of the curse ¹  and will say ²  to the her, “The Lord make you an attested curse ³  among your people, ⁴  if the Lord makes ⁵  your thigh fall away ⁶  and your abdomen swell; ⁷ 

¹ Certainly you must have heard! ²  Long ago I worked it out, In ancient times I planned ³  it; and now I am bringing it to pass. The plan is this: Fortified cities will crash into heaps of ruins. ⁴ 

Then I said to them, “You see the problem that we have: Jerusalem is desolate and its gates are burned. Come on! Let’s rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that this reproach will not continue.”

¹ Certainly you must have heard! ²  Long ago I worked it out, in ancient times I planned ³  it, and now I am bringing it to pass. The plan is this: Fortified cities will crash into heaps of ruins. ⁴ 

who fulfills the oracles of his prophetic servants ¹  and brings to pass the announcements ²  of his messengers, who says about Jerusalem, ³  ‘She will be inhabited,’ and about the towns of Judah, ‘They will be rebuilt, her ruins I will raise up,’

For this is what the Lord says, the one who created the sky – he is the true God, ¹  the one who formed the earth and made it; he established it, he did not create it without order, ²  he formed it to be inhabited – “I am the Lord, I have no peer.