I will also turn My hand against you, And smelt away your impurities as with lye; And I will remove all your slag.

Now it will come about that In the last days The mountain of the house of the Lord Will be established as the chief of the mountains, And will be raised above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it.

And it will be against all the cedars of Lebanon that are lofty and lifted up, Against all the oaks of Bashan,

Against all the lofty mountains, Against all the hills that are lifted up,

Against all the ships of Tarshish And against all the delightful ships.

then the Lord will create over the entire area of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke, and the brightness of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory will be a canopy.

He dug it all around, cleared it of stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it, And also carved out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce good grapes, But it produced only worthless ones.

For this reason the anger of the Lord has burned against His people, And He has stretched out His hand against them and struck them. And the mountains quaked, and their corpses lay like refuse in the middle of the streets. Despite all this, His anger is not spent, But His hand is still stretched out.

Its arrows are sharp and all its bows are bent; The hoofs of its horses seem like flint, and its chariot wheels like a storm wind.

They will all come and settle on the steep ravines, on the ledges of the cliffs, on all the thorn bushes, and on all the watering places.

People will come there with bows and arrows, because all the land will be briars and thorns.

As for all the hills which used to be cultivated with the plow, you will not go there for fear of briars and thorns; but they will become a place for pasturing oxen and for sheep to trample.

Now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of the Euphrates River, That is, the king of Assyria and all his glory; And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks.

A Believing Remnant

“Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered; And listen, all remote places of the earth. Get ready, yet be shattered; Get ready, yet be shattered.

And all the people know it, That is, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, Asserting in pride and in arrogance of heart:

The Arameans from the east and the Philistines from the west; And they devour Israel with gaping jaws. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away, And His hand is still stretched out.

Therefore the Lord does not rejoice over their young men, Nor does He have compassion on their orphans or their widows; For every one of them is godless and an evildoer, And every mouth is speaking foolishness. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away, And His hand is still stretched out.

Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh, And together they are against Judah. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand is still stretched out.

Nothing remains but to crouch among the captives Or fall among those killed. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand is still stretched out.

For it says, “Are not my officers all kings?

So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the arrogant pride of his eyes.”

And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like a nest, And as one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth; And there was not one that flapped its wing, opened its beak, or chirped.”

They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord As the waters cover the sea.

Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every human heart will melt.

It will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, Nor will shepherds allow their flocks to lie down there.