You complacent women, get up and listen to me! You carefree daughters, pay attention to what I say!

Look all around you! They all gather and come to you – your sons come from far away and your daughters are escorted by guardians.

I will say to the north, ‘Hand them over!’ and to the south, ‘Don’t hold any back!’ Bring my sons from distant lands, and my daughters from the remote regions of the earth,

I will set up within my temple and my walls a monument that will be better than sons and daughters. I will set up a permanent monument for them that will remain.

This is what the sovereign Lord says: “Look I will raise my hand to the nations; I will raise my signal flag to the peoples. They will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their shoulders.

At the fords of the Arnon the Moabite women are like a bird that flies about when forced from its nest.

So the sovereign master will afflict the foreheads of Zion’s women with skin diseases, the Lord will make the front of their heads bald.”

The Lord says, “The women of Zion are proud. They walk with their heads high and flirt with their eyes. They skip along and the jewelry on their ankles jingles.

At that time the sovereign master will wash the excrement from Zion’s women, he will rinse the bloodstains from Jerusalem’s midst, as he comes to judge and to bring devastation.

Tremble, you complacent ones! Shake with fear, you carefree ones! Strip off your clothes and expose yourselves – put sackcloth on your waist!

Be ashamed, O Sidon, for the sea says this, O fortress of the sea: “I have not gone into labor or given birth; I have not raised young men or brought up young women.”

Wild animals will rest there, the ruined houses will be full of hyenas. Ostriches will live there, wild goats will skip among the ruins.

In a year’s time you carefree ones will shake with fear, for the grape harvest will fail, and the fruit harvest will not arrive.

Her fortresses will be overgrown with thorns; thickets and weeds will grow in her fortified cities. Jackals will settle there; ostriches will live there.

The wild animals of the desert honor me, the jackals and ostriches, because I put water in the desert and streams in the wilderness, to quench the thirst of my chosen people,