Day and night they walk around on its walls, ¹  while wickedness and destruction ²  are within it.

He divided the sea and led them across it; he made the water stand in a heap.

You have broken down all his ¹  walls; you have made his strongholds a heap of ruins.

He raises the poor from the dirt, and lifts up the needy from the garbage pile, ¹ 

It is not good ¹  to eat too much honey, nor is it honorable for people to seek their own glory. ² 

Here is a message about Damascus: “Look, Damascus is no longer a city, it is a heap of ruins!

If you do not obey me, ¹  then I will do to this temple what I did to Shiloh. ²  And I will make this city an example to be used in curses by people from all the nations on the earth.’”

Do not listen to them. Be subject to the king of Babylon. Then you ¹  will continue to live. Why should this city be made a pile of rubble?’” ² 

Let them fall ¹  slain in the land of Babylonia, ²  mortally wounded in the streets of her cities. ³ 

Babylon will become a heap of ruins. Jackals will make their home there. ¹  It will become an object of horror and of hissing scorn, a place where no one lives. ² 

“I will make you desolate and an object of scorn among the nations around you, in the sight of everyone who passes by.

You have killed many people in this city; you have filled its streets with corpses.’

I will lay waste your cities; and you will become desolate. Then you will know that I am the Lord!

The threshing floors are full of grain; the vats overflow with fresh wine and olive oil.

Look! I will press you down, like a cart loaded down with grain presses down. ¹ 

A day of the Lord ¹  is about to come when your possessions ²  will be divided as plunder in your midst.

At sunset Joshua ordered his men to take them down from the trees. ¹  They threw them into the cave where they had hidden and piled large stones over the mouth of the cave. (They remain to this very day.) ² 

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 

“I hereby give orders that if anyone changes this directive a beam is to be pulled out from his house and he is to be raised up and impaled ¹  on it, and his house is to be reduced ²  to a rubbish heap ³  for this indiscretion. ⁴ 

I prayed, ¹  “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face to you, my God! For our iniquities have climbed higher than our heads, and our guilt extends to the heavens.