Zion

Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wasteland and Jerusalem a desolation.

Who has heard of such as this? Who has seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be delivered in an instant? Yet as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children.

“Return, O faithless children,” declares the LORD, “for I am your master, and I will take you—one from a city and two from a family—and bring you to Zion.

Raise a signal flag toward Zion. Seek refuge! Do not delay! For I am bringing disaster from the north, and terrible destruction.

For I hear a cry like a woman in labor, a cry of anguish like one bearing her first child— the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands to say, “Woe is me, for my soul faints before the murderers!”

Though she is beautiful and delicate, I will destroy the Daughter of Zion.

They grasp the bow and spear; they are cruel and merciless. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride upon horses, lined up like men in formation against you, O Daughter of Zion.”

Listen to the cry of the daughter of my people from a land far away: “Is the LORD no longer in Zion? Is her King no longer there?” “Why have they provoked Me to anger with their carved images, with their worthless foreign idols?”

For the sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! How great is our shame! For we have abandoned the land because our dwellings have been torn down.’”

Have You rejected Judah completely? Do You despise Zion? Why have You stricken us so that we are beyond healing? We hoped for peace, but no good has come, and for the time of healing, but there was only terror.

“Micah the Moreshite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah and told all the people of Judah that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.’

But I will restore your health and heal your wounds, declares the LORD, because they call you an outcast, Zion, for whom no one cares.”

For there will be a day when watchmen will call out on the hills of Ephraim, ‘Arise, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God!’”

They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will be radiant over the bounty of the LORD— the grain, new wine, and oil, and the young of the flocks and herds. Their life will be like a well-watered garden, and never again will they languish.

They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it. They will come and join themselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten.

Listen to the fugitives and refugees from the land of Babylon, declaring in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God, the vengeance for His temple.

“The LORD has brought forth our vindication; come, let us tell in Zion what the LORD our God has accomplished.”

Before your very eyes I will repay Babylon and all the dwellers of Chaldea for all the evil they have done in Zion,” declares the LORD.

May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon,” says the dweller of Zion. “May my blood be on the dwellers of Chaldea,” says Jerusalem.

The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she herself is bitter with anguish.

All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; they lack the strength to flee in the face of the hunter.

Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her. The LORD has decreed against Jacob that his neighbors become his foes. Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.

How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger.

He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is positioned. Like a foe He has killed all who were pleasing to the eye; He has poured out His wrath like fire on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.

He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His place of meeting. The LORD has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and Sabbaths. In His fierce anger He has despised both king and priest.