Get dressed ¹  and lament, you priests! Wail, you who minister at the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you servants of my God, because no one brings grain offerings or drink offerings to the temple of your God anymore. ² 

No one brings grain offerings or drink offerings to the temple ¹  of the Lord anymore. ²  So the priests, those who serve the Lord, are in mourning.

You will be called, ‘the Lord’s priests, servants of our God.’ ¹  You will enjoy ²  the wealth of nations and boast about ³  the riches you receive from them. ⁴ 

could my covenant with my servant David and my covenant with the Levites ever be broken. So David will by all means always have a descendant to occupy his throne as king and the Levites will by all means always have priests who will minister before me. ¹ 

It will be a holy portion of the land; it will be for the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary who approach the Lord to minister to him. It will be a place for their houses and a holy place for the sanctuary. ¹ 

An area eight and a quarter miles ¹  in length and three and one-third miles ²  in width will be for the Levites, who minister at the temple, as the place for the cities ³  in which they will live.

Then he said to me, “These are the houses for boiling, where the ministers of the temple boil the sacrifices of the people.”

I will make the children who follow one another in the line of my servant David very numerous. I will also make the Levites who minister before me very numerous. I will make them all as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sands which are on the seashore.’” ¹ 

Let the priests, those who serve the Lord, weep from the vestibule all the way back to the altar. ¹  Let them say, “Have pity, O Lord, on your people; please do not turn over your inheritance to be mocked, to become a proverb ²  among the nations. Why should it be said ³  among the peoples, “Where is their God?”