So I say: “Don’t look at me! I am weeping bitterly. Don’t try to console me concerning the destruction of my defenseless people.”

Sharon will become a pasture for sheep, and the Valley of Achor a place where cattle graze; they will belong to my people, who seek me.

At the end of seventy years the Lord will revive Tyre. She will start making money again by selling her services to all the earth’s kingdoms.

Leave Babylon! Flee from the Babylonians! Announce it with a shout of joy! Make this known! Proclaim it throughout the earth! Say, ‘The Lord protects his servant Jacob.

Look up at the sky! Who created all these heavenly lights? He is the one who leads out their ranks; he calls them all by name. Because of his absolute power and awesome strength, not one of them is missing.

O Lord, in distress they looked for you; they uttered incantations because of your discipline.

The water of the sea will be dried up, and the river will dry up and be empty.

They will go into caves in the rocky cliffs and into holes in the ground, trying to escape the dreadful judgment of the Lord and his royal splendor, when he rises up to terrify the earth.

The look on their faces testifies to their guilt; like the people of Sodom they openly boast of their sin. Too bad for them! For they bring disaster on themselves.

They come from a distant land, from the horizon. It is the Lord with his instruments of judgment, coming to destroy the whole earth.

For this is what the sovereign master has told me: “Within exactly one year all the splendor of Kedar will come to an end.

He will lift a signal flag for the nations; he will gather Israel’s dispersed people and assemble Judah’s scattered people from the four corners of the earth.

Those who pull evil along using cords of emptiness are as good as dead, who pull sin as with cart ropes.

They howl in the streets because of what happened to the wine; all joy turns to sorrow; celebrations disappear from the earth.

For their oppressive yoke and the club that strikes their shoulders, the cudgel the oppressor uses on them, you have shattered, as in the day of Midian’s defeat.

At that time the deaf will be able to hear words read from a scroll, and the eyes of the blind will be able to see through deep darkness.

They say, “Let’s attack Judah, terrorize it, and conquer it. Then we’ll set up the son of Tabeel as its king.”

For evil burned like a fire, it consumed thorns and briers; it burned up the thickets of the forest, and they went up in smoke.

The splendor of his forest and his orchard will be completely destroyed, as when a sick man’s life ebbs away.

On every high mountain and every high hill there will be streams flowing with water, at the time of great slaughter when the fortified towers collapse.