‘The virgin, ^(A)the daughter of Zion,
Has despised you, laughed you to scorn;
The daughter of Jerusalem
^(B)Has shaken her head behind your back!

¹³ How shall I ^(A)console^[a] you?
To what shall I liken you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare with you, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your ruin is spread wide as the sea;
Who can heal you?

^(A)‘Let my eyes flow with tears night and day,
And let them not cease;
^(B)For the virgin daughter of my people
Has been broken with a mighty stroke, with a very severe blow.

¹⁵ All who ^[a]pass by ^(A)clap their hands at you;
They hiss ^(B)and shake their heads
At the daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that is called
^(C)‘The perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth’?”

“The virgin, the daughter of Zion,
Has despised you, laughed you to scorn;
The daughter of Jerusalem
Has shaken her head behind your back!

²³ “Whom have you reproached and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice,
And lifted up your eyes on high?
Against the Holy One of Israel.
²⁴ By your servants you have reproached the Lord,
And said, ‘By the multitude of my chariots
I have come up to the height of the mountains,
To the limits of Lebanon;
I will cut down its tall cedars
And its choice cypress trees;
I will enter its farthest height,
To its fruitful forest.
²⁵ I have dug and drunk water,
And with the soles of my feet I have dried up
All the brooks of ^[a]defense.’

²⁶ “Did you not hear ^(B)long ago
How I made it,
From ancient times that I formed it?
Now I have brought it to pass,
That you should be
For crushing fortified cities into heaps of ruins.
²⁷ Therefore their inhabitants had little power;
They were dismayed and confounded;
They were as the grass of the field
And the green herb,
As the grass on the housetops
And grain blighted before it is grown.

²⁸ “But I know your dwelling place,
Your going out and your coming in,
And your rage against Me.
²⁹ Because your rage against Me and your tumult
Have come up to My ears,
Therefore ^(C)I will put My hook in your nose
And My bridle in your lips,
And I will ^(D)turn you back
By the way which you came.” ’

You shall eat this year such as grows of itself,
And the second year what springs from the same;
Also in the third year sow and reap,
Plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them.
³¹ And the remnant who have escaped of the house of Judah
Shall again take root downward,
And bear fruit upward.
³² For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant,
And those who escape from Mount Zion.
The ^(E)zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

‘He shall not come into this city,
Nor shoot an arrow there,
Nor come before it with shield,
Nor build a siege mound against it.
³⁴ By the way that he came,
By the same shall he return;
And he shall not come into this city,’
Says the Lord.
³⁵ ‘For I will ^(F)defend this city, to save it
For My own sake and for My servant ^(G)David’s sake.’ ”