For I, the Lord, tell you what will happen to ¹  the children who are born here in this land and to the men and women who are their mothers and fathers. ² 

For he did not kill me before I came from the womb, making my pregnant mother’s womb my grave forever. ¹ 

Why did I ever come forth from my mother’s womb? All I experience is trouble and grief, and I spend my days in shame. ¹ 

Their widows will become in my sight more numerous ¹  than the grains of sand on the seashores. At noontime I will bring a destroyer against the mothers of their young men. ²  I will cause anguish ³  and terror to fall suddenly upon them. ⁴ 

“Before I formed you in your mother’s womb ¹  I chose you. ²  Before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”

¹ Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he ruled in Jerusalem ²  for eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal ³  daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah.

Then I will reply, ¹  ‘I will bring them back from the land of the north. I will gather them in from the distant parts of the earth. Blind and lame people will come with them, so will pregnant women and women about to give birth. A vast throng of people will come back here.

No one will take any food to those who mourn for the dead to comfort them. No one will give them any wine to drink to console them for the loss of their father or mother.