“Return, O backsliding children,” says the Lord; “for I am married to you. I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.

Set up the standard toward Zion. Take refuge! Do not delay! For I will bring disaster from the north, And great destruction.”

“For I have heard a voice as of a woman in labor, The anguish as of her who brings forth her first child, The voice of the daughter of Zion bewailing herself; She spreads her hands, saying, ‘Woe is me now, for my soul is weary Because of murderers!’

I have likened the daughter of Zion To a lovely and delicate woman.

They will lay hold on bow and spear; They are cruel and have no mercy; Their voice roars like the sea; And they ride on horses, As men of war set in array against you, O daughter of Zion.”

Listen! The voice, The cry of the daughter of my people From a far country: “Is not the Lord in Zion? Is not her King in her?” “Why have they provoked Me to anger With their carved images— With foreign idols?”

For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How we are plundered! We are greatly ashamed, Because we have forsaken the land, Because we have been cast out of our dwellings.’ ”

The People Plead for Mercy

Have You utterly rejected Judah? Has Your soul loathed Zion? Why have You stricken us so that there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but there was no good; And for the time of healing, and there was trouble.

“Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Zion shall be plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, And the mountain of the temple Like the bare hills of the forest.” ’

For I will restore health to you And heal you of your wounds,’ says the Lord, ‘Because they called you an outcast saying: “This is Zion; No one seeks her.” ’

For there shall be a day When the watchmen will cry on Mount Ephraim, ‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion, To the Lord our God.’ ”

Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, Streaming to the goodness of the Lord— For wheat and new wine and oil, For the young of the flock and the herd; Their souls shall be like a well-watered garden, And they shall sorrow no more at all.

They shall ask the way to Zion, With their faces toward it, saying, ‘Come and let us join ourselves to the Lord In a perpetual covenant That will not be forgotten.’

The voice of those who flee and escape from the land of Babylon Declares in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, The vengeance of His temple.

The Lord has revealed our righteousness. Come and let us declare in Zion the work of the Lord our God.

“And I will repay Babylon And all the inhabitants of Chaldea For all the evil they have done In Zion in your sight,” says the Lord.

Let the violence done to me and my flesh be upon Babylon,” The inhabitant of Zion will say; “And my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea!” Jerusalem will say.