I continued up the valley during the night, inspecting the wall. Then I turned back and came to the Valley Gate, and so returned.

“And now I have become their taunt song; I have become a byword ¹  among them.

I was innocent before him, and kept myself from sinning. ¹ 

I suffer all day long, and am punished every morning.”

So I came to Jerusalem. ¹  When I had been there for three days,

I wear sackcloth and they ridicule me. ¹ 

So ¹  I will pounce on them like a lion; ²  like a leopard I will lurk by the path.

He told them what Micah had done for him, saying, ¹  “He hired me and I became his priest.”

I am like a man who cannot hear and is incapable of arguing his defense. ¹ 

When I heard these things I sat down abruptly, ¹  crying and mourning for several days. I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

I proceeded through the Valley Gate by night, in the direction of the Well of the Dragons ¹  and the Dung Gate, ²  inspecting ³  the walls of Jerusalem that had been breached and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.

“Therefore say: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Although I have removed them far away among the nations and have dispersed them among the countries, I have been a little ¹  sanctuary for them among the lands where they have gone.’