For you have made a city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city. It will never be built.

For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, when the blast of the dreaded ones is like a storm against the wall.

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation. He who believes shall not be put to shame.

A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a shelter from the storm, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a large rock in a weary land.

Behold, the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on a balance. Behold, he lifts up the islands like a very little thing.

The carpenter stretches out a line. He marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes. He marks it out with compasses, and shapes it like the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to reside in a house.

The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a besieged city.

And he will be a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock that makes them fall to both the houses of Israel, for a trap and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.