But when they were sick, I dressed in mourning; I deprived myself of food; I prayed with my head bowed low,

as I would pray for a friend or a brother. I went around bent over in mourning, as one who mourns for his mother.

Three years earlier the LORD had told Isaiah son of Amoz to take off his sandals and the sackcloth he was wearing. He obeyed and went around naked and barefoot.

The Sovereign LORD Almighty was calling you then to weep and mourn, to shave your heads and wear sackcloth.

Cry, you people, like a young woman who mourns the death of the man she was going to marry.

Put on sackcloth and weep, you priests who serve at the altar! Go into the Temple and mourn all night! There is no grain or wine to offer your God.

Our neighbors see what you did to us, and they mock us and laugh at us.

You have made us a joke among the nations; they shake their heads at us in scorn.

In the countries to which the LORD will scatter you, the people will be shocked at what has happened to you; they will make fun of you and ridicule you.

then I will remove my people Israel from the land that I have given them. I will also abandon this Temple which I have consecrated as the place where I am to be worshiped. People everywhere will ridicule Israel and treat her with contempt.

I will bring such a disaster on them that all the nations of the world will be terrified. People will make fun of them, make jokes about them, ridicule them, and use their name as a curse everywhere I scatter them.