The city is left in ruins; the gate is reduced to rubble.

“Something horrible and shocking is going on in the land of Judah:

How desolate they become in a mere moment! Terrifying judgments make their demise complete!

My heart is crushed because my dear people are being crushed. I go about crying and grieving. I am overwhelmed with dismay.

You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you.

Come! Witness the exploits of the Lord, who brings devastation to the earth!

Like lions his enemies roar victoriously over him; they raise their voices in triumph. They have laid his land waste; his cities have been burned down and deserted.

So their land will become an object of horror. People will forever hiss out their scorn over it. All who pass that way will be filled with horror and will shake their heads in derision.

Set up a gravestone for Moab, for it will certainly be laid in ruins! Its cities will be laid waste and become uninhabited.”

“Edom will become an object of horror. All who pass by it will be filled with horror; they will hiss out their scorn because of all the disasters that have happened to it.

Babylon hammered the whole world to pieces. But see how that ‘hammer’ has been broken and shattered! See what an object of horror Babylon has become among the nations!

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.

“See how Babylon has been captured! See how the pride of the whole earth has been taken! See what an object of horror Babylon has become among the nations!

You will be overcome by drunkenness and sorrow. The cup of your sister Samaria is a cup of horror and desolation.

Ephraim will be ruined in the day of judgment! What I am declaring to the tribes of Israel will certainly take place!

They have destroyed our vines; they have turned our fig trees into mere splinters. They have completely stripped off the bark and thrown them aside; the twigs are stripped bare.

The Lord was angry at Judah and Jerusalem and made them an appalling object of horror at which people hiss out their scorn, as you can see with your own eyes.

Don’t be like your fathers and brothers who were unfaithful to the Lord God of their ancestors, provoking him to destroy them, as you can see.

The Lord who commands armies told me this: “Many houses will certainly become desolate, large, impressive houses will have no one living in them.

Look, the Lord’s day of judgment is coming; it is a day of cruelty and savage, raging anger, destroying the earth and annihilating its sinners.