Alas for the day!
For the [judgment] day of the Lord is at hand,
And it will come [upon the nation] as a destruction from the Almighty.

Before them a fire devours,
And behind them a flame burns;
Before them the land is like the Garden of Eden,
But behind them a desolate wilderness;
And nothing at all escapes them.

Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord,
Weep between the porch and the altar,
And let them say, “Have compassion and spare Your people, O Lord,
And do not make Your inheritance (Israel) an object of ridicule,
Or a [humiliating] byword among the [Gentile] nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”