The Lord announced to me, “Unfaithful Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah.

This is what the Lord of Hosts says:

Glean the remnant of Israel
as thoroughly as a vine.
Pass your hand once more like a grape gatherer
over the branches.

However, they wouldn’t listen to Me or pay attention but became obstinate; they did more evil than their ancestors.

My tent is destroyed;
all my tent cords are snapped.
My sons have departed from me and are no more.
I have no one to pitch my tent again
or to hang up my curtains.

I made their widows more numerous
than the sand of the seas.
I brought a destroyer at noon
against the mother of young men.
I suddenly released on her
agitation and terrors.

You did more evil than your fathers. Look, each one of you was following the stubbornness of his evil heart, not obeying Me.

The heart is more deceitful than anything else,
and incurable—who can understand it?

but, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought and led the descendants of the house of Israel from the land of the north and from all the other countries where I had banished them.’ They will dwell once more in their own land.”

This is what the Lord says:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
a lament with bitter weeping—
Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted for her children
because they are no more.

“This is what the Lord of Hosts says: In this desolate place—without man or beast—and in all its cities there will once more be a grazing land where shepherds may rest flocks.

“My lord the king, these men have been evil in all they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have dropped him into the cistern where he will die from hunger, because there is no more bread in the city.”

They will cut down her forest—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
though it is dense,
for they are more numerous than locusts;
they cannot be counted.

I will weep for you, vine of Sibmah,
with more than the weeping for Jazer.
Your tendrils have extended to the sea;
they have reached to the sea and to Jazer.
The destroyer has fallen on your summer fruit and grape harvest.