The earth will be weeping for this, and the heavens on high will be black: because I have said it, and I will not go back from it; it is my purpose, and it will not be changed.

How long will the land have grief, and the plants of all the land be dry? because of the sins of the people living in it, destruction has overtaken the beasts and the birds; because they said, God does not see our ways.

And in the public places of her towns will be sorrow and weeping; and she will be seated on the earth, waste and uncovered.

Because of this the land will be dry, and everyone living in it will be wasted away, with the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven; even the fishes of the sea will be taken away.

The fields are wasted, the land has become dry; for the grain is wasted, the new wine is kept back, the oil is poor.

The gates

The earth is sorrowing and wasting away, the world is full of grief and wasting away, the high ones of the earth come to nothing.

The earth is sorrowing and wasting away; Lebanon is put to shame and has become waste; Sharon is like the Arabah; and in Bashan and Carmel the leaves are falling.

They

For the destruction of the daughter of my people I am broken: I am dressed in the clothing of grief; fear has taken me in its grip.

Her doors have gone down into the earth; he has sent destruction on her locks: her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not; even her prophets have had no vision from the Lord.

Their face is blacker than night; in the streets no one has knowledge of them: their skin is hanging on their bones, they are dry, they have become like wood.

Our skin is heated like an oven because of our burning heat from need of food.

At their coming the people are bent with pain: all faces become red together.

The cry

So the Lord has said, I will send evil on them, which they will not be able to get away from; and they will send up a cry for help to me, but I will not give ear to them.

Let a cry for help go up from their houses, when you send an armed band on them suddenly: for they have made a hole in which to take me, and have put nets for my feet secretly.

And at the sound of their weeping the agreement which God had made with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob came to his mind.

And those men who were not overtaken by death were cruelly diseased: and the cry of the town went up to heaven.

Tomorrow about this time I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and on him you are to put the holy oil, making him ruler over my people Israel, and he will make my people safe from the hands of the Philistines: for I have seen the sorrow of my people, whose cry has come up to me.

So that the cry of the poor might come up to him, and the prayer of those in need come to his ears.

For the vine-garden of the Lord of armies is the people of Israel, and the men of Judah are the plant of his delight: and he was looking for upright judging, and there was blood; for righteousness, and there was a cry for help.

My heart is crying out for Moab; her people go in flight to Zoar, and to Eglath-shelishiyah: for they go up with weeping by the slope of Luhith; on the way to Horonaim they send up a cry of destruction.

And it came about that as they would not give ear to his voice, so I would not give ear to their voice, says the Lord of armies:

General references

For this cause the heaven over you is kept from giving dew, and the earth from giving her fruit.