Listen to this, you elders; pay attention, all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your whole life or in the lifetime of your ancestors?

For a nation has invaded our land. There are so many of them they are too numerous to count. Their teeth are like those of a lion; they tear apart their prey like a lioness.

Wail like a young virgin clothed in sackcloth, lamenting the death of her husband-to-be.

It will be a day of dreadful darkness, a day of foreboding storm clouds, like blackness spread over the mountains. It is a huge and powerful army -- there has never been anything like it ever before, and there will not be anything like it for many generations to come!

Like fire they devour everything in their path; a flame blazes behind them. The land looks like the Garden of Eden before them, but behind them there is only a desolate wilderness -- for nothing escapes them!

They look like horses; they charge ahead like war horses.

They sound like chariots rumbling over mountain tops, like the crackling of blazing fire consuming stubble, like the noise of a mighty army being drawn up for battle.

They charge like warriors; they scale walls like soldiers. Each one proceeds on his course; they do not alter their path.

They rush into the city; they scale its walls. They climb up into the houses; they go in through the windows like a thief.

The Lord responded to his people, "Look! I am about to restore your grain as well as fresh wine and olive oil. You will be fully satisfied. I will never again make you an object of mockery among the nations.

For look! In those days and at that time I will return the exiles to Judah and Jerusalem.

Look! I am rousing them from that place to which you sold them. I will repay you for what you have done!