Then Hezekiah strengthened his position by rebuilding the entire broken-down wall and heightening the towers and the other outside wall. He repaired the supporting terraces of the city of David, and made an abundance of weapons and shields.

They said to me, “The remnant in the province, who survived the exile, are in great trouble and disgrace. Jerusalem’s wall has been broken down, and its gates have been burned down.”

I went out at night through the Valley Gate toward the Serpent’s Well and the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.

Why have You broken down its walls
so that all who pass by pick its fruit?

You have broken down all his walls;
You have reduced his fortified cities to ruins.

For He has broken down the bronze gates
and cut through the iron bars.

A man who does not control his temper
is like a city whose wall is broken down.

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The seeds lie shriveled in their casings.
The storehouses are in ruin,
and the granaries are broken down,
because the grain has withered away.

Foreigners, ruthless men from the nations, cut it down and left it lying. Its limbs fell on the mountains and in every valley; its boughs lay broken in all the earth’s ravines. All the peoples of the earth left its shade and abandoned it.