² For thou hast made of a city a heap, of a fortified city a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built.

¹⁴ For the palace shall be forsaken; the populous city shall be deserted; ^[a]the hill and the watch-tower shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks;

¹⁵ For my people have forgotten me, they have burned incense to false gods; and they have been made to stumble in their ways, in the ancient paths, to walk in bypaths, in a way not cast up;

⁹ behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith Jehovah, and I will send unto Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about; and I will ^[a]utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations.

¹² And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith Jehovah, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it ^[a]desolate for ever.