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:
26. Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all the inhabitants of the desert who clip the hair on their temples. All these nations are uncircumcised, and the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”