O Lord, I love the temple where you live, the place where your splendor is revealed.

He is a father to the fatherless and an advocate for widows. God rules from his holy palace.

For you have taken refuge in the Lord, my shelter, the sovereign One.

Be my protector and refuge, a stronghold where I can be safe! For you are my high ridge and my stronghold.

A prayer of Moses, the man of God. O Lord, you have been our protector through all generations!

Babylon will become a heap of ruins. Jackals will make their home there. It will become an object of horror and of hissing scorn, a place where no one lives.

Be silent in the Lord’s presence, all people everywhere, for he is being moved to action in his holy dwelling place.

Why are you scorning my sacrifice and my offering that I commanded for my dwelling place? You have honored your sons more than you have me by having made yourselves fat from the best parts of all the offerings of my people Israel.’

You will see trouble in my dwelling place! Israel will experience blessings, but there will not be an old man in your house for all time.

The priests and Levites got up and pronounced blessings on the people. The Lord responded favorably to them as their prayers reached his holy dwelling place in heaven.

The Lord God of their ancestors continually warned them through his messengers, for he felt compassion for his people and his dwelling place.

The Lord said, “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins. Jackals will make their home there. I will destroy the towns of Judah so that no one will be able to live in them.”

Listen! News is coming even now. The rumble of a great army is heard approaching from a land in the north. It is coming to turn the towns of Judah into rubble, places where only jackals live.

“Hazor will become a permanent wasteland, a place where only jackals live. No one will live there. No human being will settle in it.”

Where now is the den of the lions, the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion, lioness, and lion cub once prowled and no one disturbed them?

Look down from your holy dwelling place in heaven and bless your people Israel and the land you have given us, just as you promised our ancestors – a land flowing with milk and honey.”

“Then, Jeremiah, make the following prophecy against them: ‘Like a lion about to attack, the Lord will roar from the heights of heaven; from his holy dwelling on high he will roar loudly. He will roar mightily against his land. He will shout in triumph like those stomping juice from the grapes against all those who live on the earth.