"And you shall say to them this word, 'Let my eyes melt [with] tears night and day, and let them not cease, for [with] a great wound the virgin daughter of my people is broken, [with] a very incurable wound.

Go up [to] Gilead and take balm, O virgin of the daughter of Egypt. {In vain} you make use of many medicines; there is no healing for you.

For thus says Yahweh to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem, "Break up for yourselves prepared virgin soil, and you must not sow among thornbushes.

"Therefore thus says Yahweh, 'Please ask among the nations, "Who has heard {the like of this}?" The virgin of Israel has done something very horrible.

I will again build you, and you will be built, O virgin Israel. You will again adorn yourself [with] your tambourines, and you will go forth in [the] dancing in a ring of [the] merrymakers.

"Set up for yourself road markers, make for yourself signposts, set your {mind} to the main road, [the] road [by which] you went. Return, O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities.

At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, "{A hot wind from the barren heights} in the desert, {in the direction of} the daughter of my people, not to winnow and not to cleanse,

For I heard a voice like an ill woman, anxiety like [a woman who] bears her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion. She is gasping for breath, she is spreading out her hands: "Woe is me, for I am becoming tired before killers."

The lovely and the delicate, the daughter of Jerusalem, I will destroy.

[The] bow and [the] short sword they grasp [are] cruel, and they show no mercy. Their sound roars like the sea, and on horses they ride, drawn up like a man for battle against you, O daughter of Zion."

O daughter of my people, gird yourself [with] sackcloth, and roll about in the ashes in mourning, a mourning ceremony [as for] an only child. Make for yourself wailing of bitterness, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.

And they have treated the wound of the daughter of my people lightly, {saying}, 'Peace, peace,' but there is no peace.

Look, the sound of the cry for help of the daughter of my people from a distant land, 'Is Yahweh not in Zion? Is her king not in her?' Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with idols of a foreign land?"

"Because of the wound of the daughter of my people I am broken down, I mourn, horror has seized me.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no healer there? Why, then, has the healing of the daughter of my people not been restored?

{Oh that my head were waters}, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night, [for] the slain of the daughter of my people.

Therefore, thus says Yahweh of hosts: "Look, I [am] about to refine them, and I will test them, for what else can I do, because of the {presence} of the daughter of my people?