How deserted will that once-famous city ¹  be, that city that was once filled with ²  joy! ³ 

Your priests ¹  did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord?’ ²  Those responsible for teaching my law ³  did not really know me. ⁴  Your rulers rebelled against me. Your prophets prophesied in the name of the god Baal. ⁵  They all worshiped idols that could not help them. ⁶ 

Do not build houses. Do not plant crops. Do not plant a vineyard or own one. ¹  Live in tents all your lives. If you do these things you will ²  live a long time in the land that you wander about on.’ ³ 

I answered, “Oh, Lord God, ¹  I really ²  do not know how to speak well enough for that, ³  for I am too young.” ⁴ 

Has a nation ever changed its gods (even though they are not really gods at all)? But my people have exchanged me, their glorious God, ¹  for a god that cannot help them at all! ² 

“It did no good for me to punish your people. They did not respond to such correction. You slaughtered your prophets like a voracious lion.” ¹ 

All this will happen because the Lord said, ¹  “The whole land will be desolate; however, I will not completely destroy it.

Yet even then ¹  I will not completely destroy you,” says the Lord.

The Lord said, ¹  “I appointed prophets as watchmen to warn you, ²  saying: ‘Pay attention to the warning sound of the trumpet!’” ³  But they said, “We will not pay attention!”

The fiery bellows of judgment burn fiercely. But there is too much dross to be removed. ¹  The process of refining them has proved useless. ²  The wicked have not been purged.

Not one of them will survive. ¹  I will bring disaster on those men from Anathoth who threatened you. ²  A day of reckoning is coming for them.” ³ 

My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds. ¹  They will work until they are exhausted, but will get nothing from it. They will be disappointed in their harvests ²  because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger. ³ 

But I will completely uproot and destroy any of those nations that will not pay heed,’” ¹  says the Lord.

They are dismayed because the ground is cracked ¹  because there has been no rain in the land. The farmers, too, are dismayed and bury their faces in their hands.

Even the doe abandons her newborn fawn ¹  in the field because there is no grass.

I will give away your wealth and your treasures as plunder. I will give it away free of charge for the sins you have committed throughout your land.

I will make you serve your enemies ¹  in a land that you know nothing about. For my anger is like a fire that will burn against you.”

I did not spend my time in the company of other people, laughing and having a good time. I stayed to myself because I felt obligated to you ¹  and because I was filled with anger at what they had done.

“Do not get married and do not have children here in this land.

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