Your country has been devastated, and your cities have been burned to the ground. While you look on, foreigners take over your land and bring everything to ruin.

Jerusalem alone is left, a city under siege---as defenseless as a guard's hut in a vineyard or a shed in a cucumber field.

The LORD is going to devastate the earth and leave it desolate. He will twist the earth's surface and scatter its people.

The earth dries up and withers; the whole world grows weak; both earth and sky decay.

So God has pronounced a curse on the earth. Its people are paying for what they have done. Fewer and fewer remain alive.

One disaster follows another; the whole country is left in ruins. Suddenly our tents are destroyed; their curtains are torn to pieces.

The LORD says, "My people are stupid; they don't know me. They are like foolish children; they have no understanding. They are experts at doing what is evil, but failures at doing what is good."

I looked at the mountains---they were shaking, and the hills were rocking back and forth.

The fertile land had become a desert; its cities were in ruins because of the LORD's fierce anger.

The cypress trees and the cedars of Lebanon rejoice over the fallen king, because there is no one to cut them down, now that he is gone!

You sent your servants to boast to me that with all your chariots you had conquered the highest mountains of Lebanon. You boasted that there you cut down the tallest cedars and the finest cypress trees, and that you reached the deepest parts of the forests.

Open your doors, Lebanon, so that fire can burn down your cedar trees!

The rulers cry out in grief; their glory is gone! Listen to the roaring of the lions; their forest home along the Jordan is destroyed!

The desert will sing and shout for joy; it will be as beautiful as the Lebanon Mountains and as fertile as the fields of Carmel and Sharon. Everyone will see the LORD's splendor, see his greatness and power.

They will worship me and will lead their sheep and cattle to pasture in the Plain of Sharon in the west and in Trouble Valley in the east.

I am only a wild flower in Sharon, a lily in a mountain valley.

At the same time we captured all his towns---there was not one that we did not take. In all we captured sixty towns---the whole region of Argob, where King Og of Bashan ruled.

I will restore the people of Israel to their land. They will eat the food that grows on Mount Carmel and in the region of Bashan, and they will eat all they want of the crops that grow in the territories of Ephraim and Gilead.

Be a shepherd to your people, LORD, the people you have chosen. Although they live apart in the wilderness, there is fertile land around them. Let them go and feed in the rich pastures of Bashan and Gilead, as they did long ago.

He commands the sea, and it dries up! He makes the rivers go dry. The fields of Bashan wither, Mount Carmel turns brown, and the flowers of Lebanon fade.