In all your dwellings, the cities will be laid waste and the high places ruined so that your altars will be laid waste and ruined, your idols will be shattered and demolished, your incense altars will be broken down, and your works wiped out.

Your altars will be ruined and your incense altars will be broken. I will throw down your slain in front of your idols.

The inhabited towns will be left in ruins and the land will be devastated. Then you will know that I am the Lord.'"

Your prophets have become like jackals among the ruins, O Israel.

A total ruin I will make it! It will come to an end when the one arrives to whom I have assigned judgment.'

then I will bring you down to bygone people, to be with those who descend to the pit. I will make you live in the lower parts of the earth, among the primeval ruins, with those who descend to the pit, so that you will not be inhabited or stand in the land of the living.

The land of Egypt will become a desolate ruin. Then they will know that I am the Lord. Because he said, "The Nile is mine and I made it,"

I am against you and your waterways. I will turn the land of Egypt into an utter desolate ruin from Migdol to Syene, as far as the border with Ethiopia.

I will turn the land of Egypt into a desolation in the midst of desolate lands; for forty years her cities will lie desolate in the midst of ruined cities. I will scatter Egypt among the nations and disperse them among foreign countries.

They will be desolate among desolate lands, and their cities will be among ruined cities.

On its ruins all the birds of the sky will live, and all the wild animals will walk on its branches.

"Son of man, the ones living in these ruins in the land of Israel are saying, 'Abraham was only one man, yet he possessed the land, but we are many; surely the land has been given to us for a possession.'

"This is what you must say to them, 'This is what the sovereign Lord says: As surely as I live, those living in the ruins will die by the sword, those in the open field I will give to the wild beasts for food, and those who are in the strongholds and caves will die of disease.

I will turn the land into a desolate ruin; her confident pride will come to an end. The mountains of Israel will be so desolate no one will pass through them.

Then they will know that I am the Lord when I turn the land into a desolate ruin because of all the abominable deeds they have committed.'

Say to it, 'This is what the sovereign Lord says: "'Look, I am against you, Mount Seir; I will stretch out my hand against you and turn you into a desolate ruin.

I will turn Mount Seir into a desolate ruin; I will cut off from it the one who passes through or returns.

therefore, O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the sovereign Lord: This is what the sovereign Lord says to the mountains and hills, the ravines and valleys, and to the desolate ruins and the abandoned cities that have become prey and an object of derision to the rest of the nations round about --

I will multiply your people -- the whole house of Israel, all of it. The cities will be populated and the ruins rebuilt.

"'This is what the sovereign Lord says: In the day I cleanse you from all your sins, I will populate the cities and the ruins will be rebuilt.

They will say, "This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; the ruined, desolate, and destroyed cities are now fortified and inhabited."

Then the nations which remain around you will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruins and replanted what was desolate. I, the Lord, have spoken -- and I will do it!'

Like the sheep for offerings, like the sheep of Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so will the ruined cities be filled with flocks of people. Then they will know that I am the Lord."

After many days you will be summoned; in the latter years you will come to a land restored from the ravages of war, with many peoples gathered on the mountains of Israel that had long been in ruins. Its people were brought out from the peoples, and all of them will be living securely.

to loot and plunder, to attack the inhabited ruins and the people gathered from the nations, who are acquiring cattle and goods, who live at the center of the earth."