Behold, I am against you, O you most proud, says the Lord GOD of hosts: for your day has come, the time that I will punish you.

The king of Babylon has heard the report of them, and his hands grew feeble: anguish took hold of him, and birth pangs as of a woman in travail.

Therefore hear you the counsel of the LORD, that he has taken against Babylon; and his purposes, that he has purposed against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out: surely he shall make their habitation desolate with them.

For Israel has not been forsaken, nor Judah by his God, by the LORD of hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.

Babylon has been a golden cup in the LORD's hand, that made all the earth drunk: the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.

The LORD has brought forth our righteousness: come, and let us declare in Zion the work of the LORD our God.

Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the LORD has raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the LORD, the vengeance for his temple.

Set up the standard upon the walls of Babylon, make the watch strong, set up the watchmen, prepare the ambushes: for the LORD has both purposed and done that which he spoke against the inhabitants of Babylon.

O you that dwell by many waters, abundant in treasures, your end has come, and the measure of your covetousness.

The LORD of hosts has sworn by himself, saying, Surely I will fill you with men, as with locusts; and they shall lift up a shout against you.

He has made the earth by his power, he has established the world by his wisdom, and has stretched out the heaven by his understanding.

The mighty men of Babylon have ceased to fight, they have remained in their strongholds: their might has failed; they became as women: they have burned her dwelling places; her bars are broken.

Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me, he has made me an empty vessel, he has swallowed me up like a monster, he has filled his belly with my delicacies, he has cast me out.

How is Sheshach taken! and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised! how has Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!

The sea has come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its waves.

And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.

As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the earth.

We are ashamed, because we have heard reproach: shame has covered our faces: for strangers have come into the sanctuaries of the LORD's house.

Because the LORD has plundered Babylon, and destroyed out of her the great voice; when her waves do roar like great waters, a noise of their voice is raised:

Because the plunderer has come upon her, even upon Babylon, and her mighty men are taken, everyone of their bows is broken: for the LORD God of recompenses shall surely repay.

How does the city sit lovely, that was full of people! how has she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how has she become a slave!

She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she has none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.

Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwells among the nations, she finds no rest: all her persecutors overtook her in her distress.

Her adversaries have become the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children have gone into captivity before the enemy.

And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty has departed: her princes have become like harts that find no pasture, and they have gone without strength before the pursuer.

Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sighs, and turns away.

Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembers not her latter end; therefore she came down awesomely: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy has magnified himself.

The adversary has spread out his hand over all her precious things: for she has seen that the nations entered into her sanctuary, whom you did command that they should not enter into your congregation.

Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, which the LORD has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

From above has he sent fire into my bones, and it prevails against them: he has spread a net for my feet, he has turned me back: he has made me desolate and faint all the day.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are woven together, and come up upon my neck: he has made my strength to fall, the Lord has delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.

The Lord has trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he has called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord has trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.

Zion spreads forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the LORD has commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as an unclean thing among them.

How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied: he has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought them down to the ground: he has polluted the kingdom and its princes.

He has cut off in his fierce anger all the might of Israel: he has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours round about.

He has bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and has slain all that were pleasant to the eye in the tent of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.

The Lord was as an enemy: he has swallowed up Israel, he has swallowed up all her palaces: he has destroyed his strongholds, and has increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

And he has violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were a garden: he has destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD has caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and has despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.

The Lord has cast off his altar, he has abhorred his sanctuary, he has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn feast.

The LORD has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he has stretched out a line, he has not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

Her gates are sunk into the ground; he has destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the nations: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

The LORD has done that which he had purposed; he has fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he has thrown down, and has not pitied: and he has caused your enemy to rejoice over you, he has set up the might of your adversaries.

You have called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the LORD'S anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have cared for and brought up has my enemy consumed.

I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

He has led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

Surely against me has he turned; he turns his hand against me all the day.

My flesh and my skin has he made old: he has broken my bones.

He has besieged me, and surrounded me with gall and travail.

He has set me in dark places, like they that are long dead.

He has hedged me in, that I cannot get out: he has made my chain heavy.

He has enclosed my ways with hewn stone, he has made my paths crooked.

He has turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he has made me desolate.

He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

He has caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my heart.

He has filled me with bitterness, he has made me drunk with wormwood.

He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he has covered me with ashes.

And I said, My strength and my hope has perished from the LORD:

My soul has them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.

He sits alone and keeps silence, because he has borne it upon him.

Fear and a snare has come upon us, desolation and destruction.

How has the gold become dim! how has the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.

Even the jackals draw out the breast, they nurse their young ones: the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

Their appearance is now blacker than coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaves to their bones; it is withered, it has become like a dry stick.

The LORD has accomplished his fury; he has poured out his fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured its foundations.

The anger of the LORD has scattered them; he will no longer regard them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favored not the elders.

They hunt our steps, so that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end has come.

The joy of our heart has ceased; our dance has turned into mourning.

The crown has fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

And he said unto me, Son of man, I send you to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day.

And they, whether they will hear, or whether they refuse, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there has been a prophet among them.

Again, When a righteous man turns from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because you have not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at your hand.

Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul has not been polluted: for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.

And she has changed my ordinances into wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her: for they have refused my ordinances and my statutes, they have not walked in them.

And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations where they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their adulterous heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the harlot after their idols: and they shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.

Also, you son of man, thus says the Lord GOD unto the land of Israel; An end, the end has come upon the four corners of the land.

Now has the end come upon you, and I will send my anger upon you, and will judge you according to your ways, and will recompense upon you all your abominations.

Thus says the Lord GOD; An evil, a special evil, behold, has come.

An end has come, the end has come: it watches for you; behold, it has come.

The morning has come unto you, O you that dwell in the land: the time has come, the day of trouble is near, and not the rejoicing upon the mountains.

Behold the day, behold, it has come: the morning has gone forth; the rod has blossomed, pride has budded.

Violence has risen up into a rod of wickedness: none of them shall remain, nor of their multitude, nor of any of theirs: neither shall there be wailing for them.

The time has come, the day draws near: let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn: for wrath is upon all their multitude.

Then said he unto me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his idols? for they say, The LORD sees us not; the LORD has forsaken the land.

Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD sees not.

Son of man, has not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said unto you, What do you?

They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The LORD says: and the LORD has not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word.

Lo, when the wall has fallen, shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing with which you have daubed it?

And if the prophet is deceived when he has spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.

Behold, when it was whole, it was fit for no work: how much less shall it be fit yet for any work, when the fire has devoured it, and it is burned?

As I live, says the Lord GOD, Sodom your sister has not done, she nor her daughters, as you have done, you and your daughters.

Neither has Samaria committed half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have justified your sisters in all your abominations which you have done.

Say now to the rebellious house, Know you not what these things mean? tell them, Behold, the king of Babylon has come to Jerusalem, and has taken its king, and its princes, and led them with him to Babylon;

And has taken the king's descendant, and made a covenant with him, and has taken an oath from him: he has also taken the mighty of the land:

Seeing he despised the oath by breaking the covenant, when, lo, he had given his hand, and has done all these things, he shall not escape.

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD; As I live, surely my oath that he has despised, and my covenant that he has broken, even it will I recompense upon his own head.

And I will spread my net upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, and will execute judgment on him there for his trespass that he has trespassed against me.

And has not eaten upon the mountains, neither has lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, neither has defiled his neighbor's wife, neither has come near a woman during her impurity,

And has not oppressed any, but has restored to the debtor his pledge, has robbed none by violence, has given his bread to the hungry, and has covered the naked with a garment;

He that has not lent money for interest, neither has taken any increase, that has withdrawn his hand from iniquity, has executed true justice between man and man,