16. I will scatter them among the nations that they and their fathers have not known. I will send a sword after them until I have finished them off.”
17. This is what the Lord of Hosts says:Consider, and summon the women who mourn; send for the skillful women.
18. Let them come quickly to raise a lament over usso that our eyes may overflow with tears,our eyelids soaked with weeping.
19. For a sound of lamentation is heard from Zion:How devastated we are.We are greatly ashamed, for we have abandoned the land;our dwellings have been torn down.
20. Now hear the word of the Lord, you women.Pay attention to the word of His mouth.Teach your daughters a lamentand one another a dirge,
21. for Death has climbed through our windows;it has entered our fortresses,cutting off children from the streets,young men from the squares.
22. Speak as follows:This is what the Lord says:Human corpses will falllike manure on the surface of the field, like newly cut grain after the reaperwith no one to gather it.
23. This is what the Lord says:The wise man must not boast in his wisdom;the strong man must not boast in his strength;the wealthy man must not boast in his wealth.
24. But the one who boasts should boast in this,that he understands and knows Me —that I am Yahweh, showing faithful love,justice, and righteousness on the earth,for I delight in these things.This is the Lord’s declaration.
25. “The days are coming” — the Lord’s declaration — “when I will punish all the circumcised yet uncircumcised: