1. The message concerning the Valley of Vision. What troubles you now, that you have all gone up to the house-tops,
2. you who are filled with turmoils, a noisy city, a city of revelry? Your slain are not slain with the sword, nor the dead in battle.
3. All your rulers have fled together; without a bow they were taken captive. All who are found in you are bound together, who have fled from afar.
4. Therefore I said, “Look away from me, let me weep bitterly. Do not try to comfort me because of the ravaging of the daughter of my people.”
5. For it is a day of uproar and treading down and perplexity by the Master יהוה of hosts in the Valley of Vision – breaking down of a wall and of crying to the mountain.
6. And Ěylam bore the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and Qir bared the shield.
7. And it shall be that your choicest valleys shall be filled with chariots, and the horsemen shall take up positions at the gate.
8. Then He removed the covering of Yehuḏah. And you looked in that day to the weapons of the House of the Forest.
9. And you saw the breaches of the city of Dawiḏ, that it was great. And you gathered together the waters of the lower pool.
10. And you counted the houses of Yerushalayim, and the houses you broke down to strengthen the wall.
11. And you dug a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you have not looked to its Maker, nor have you seen Him who fashioned it long ago.
12. And in that day the Master יהוה of hosts called for weeping and for mourning, for baldness and for girding with sackcloth.
13. Then see! Joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating meat and drinking wine, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”
14. And it was revealed in my hearing by יהוה of hosts, “For this crookedness shall certainly not be pardoned until you die,” said the Master יהוה of hosts.
15. Thus said the Master יהוה of hosts, “Go, come to this steward, to Sheḇnah, who is over the house, and say,
16. ‘What have you here, and whom have you here, that you have hewn a tomb here, as he who hews himself a tomb on high, cutting out a resting place for himself in a rock?