Now this is what the Sovereign LORD is saying: "Just as a vine is taken from the forest and burned, so I will take the people who live in Jerusalem

They have been unfaithful to me, and so I will make the country a wilderness." The Sovereign LORD has spoken.

The city gates will mourn and cry, and the city itself will be like a woman sitting on the ground, stripped naked.

"When that time comes, the fine vineyards, each with a thousand vines and each worth a thousand pieces of silver, will be overgrown with thorn bushes and briers.

People will go hunting there with bows and arrows. Yes, the whole country will be full of briers and thorn bushes.

The earth will lie shattered and ruined. The LORD has spoken and it will be done.

The city is in ruins, and its gates have been broken down.

Your sacred cities are like a desert; Jerusalem is a deserted ruin,

and our Temple, the sacred and beautiful place where our ancestors praised you, has been destroyed by fire. All the places we loved are in ruins.

Like a lion coming from its hiding place, a destroyer of nations has set out. He is coming to destroy Judah. The cities of Judah will be left in ruins, and no one will live in them.

I looked at the earth---it was a barren waste; at the sky---there was no light.

I saw that there were no people; even the birds had flown away.

(The LORD has said that the whole earth will become a wasteland, but that he will not completely destroy it.)

At the noise of the cavalry and archers everyone will run away. Some will run to the forest; others will climb up among the rocks. Every town will be left empty, and no one will live in them again.

Many foreign rulers have destroyed my vineyard; they have trampled down my fields; they have turned my lovely land into a desert.

Across all the desert highlands people have come to plunder. I have sent war to destroy the entire land; no one can live in peace.

Listen to what I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, have to say. I will silence the sounds of joy and gladness and the happy sounds of wedding feasts. The people here will live to see this happen.

and to tell them that the LORD Almighty had said, "I will break this people and this city, and it will be like this broken clay jar that cannot be put together again. People will bury their dead even in Topheth because there will be nowhere else to bury them.

"As for King Zedekiah of Judah, the politicians around him, and the rest of the people of Jerusalem who have stayed in this land or moved to Egypt---I, the LORD, will treat them all like these figs that are too bad to be eaten.

I will bring war, starvation, and disease on them until there is not one of them left in the land that I gave to them and their ancestors."

'I am going to send for all the peoples from the north and for my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. I am going to bring them to fight against Judah and its inhabitants and against all the neighboring nations. I am going to destroy this nation and its neighbors and leave them in ruins forever, a terrible and shocking sight. I, the LORD, have spoken.

I will give the order, and they will return to this city. They will attack it, capture it, and burn it down. I will make the towns of Judah like a desert where no one lives. I, the LORD, have spoken."

because Mount Zion lies lonely and deserted, and wild jackals prowl through its ruins.

O God, hear my prayer and pleading. Restore your Temple, which has been destroyed; restore it so that everyone will know that you are God.