Get dressed and lament, you priests! Wail, you who minister at the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you servants of my God, because no one brings grain offerings or drink offerings to the temple of your God anymore.

It will be a day of dreadful darkness, a day of foreboding storm clouds, like blackness spread over the mountains. It is a huge and powerful army -- there has never been anything like it ever before, and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come!

They charge like warriors; they scale walls like soldiers. Each one proceeds on his course; they do not alter their path.

They do not jostle one another; each of them marches straight ahead. They burst through the city defenses and do not break ranks.

"Yet even now," the Lord says, "return to me with all your heart -- with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts, not just your garments!"

Let the priests, those who serve the Lord, weep from the vestibule all the way back to the altar. Let them say, "Have pity, O Lord, on your people; please do not turn over your inheritance to be mocked, to become a proverb among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, "Where is their God?"

Do not fear, my land! Rejoice and be glad, because the Lord has accomplished great things!

Do not fear, wild animals! For the pastures of the wilderness are again green with grass. Indeed, the trees bear their fruit; the fig tree and the vine yield to their fullest.

I will avenge their blood which I had not previously acquitted. It is the Lord who dwells in Zion!