Zion

Your holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.

Who has heard such a thing? who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she gave birth to her children.

“Return, backsliding children,” says the LORD; “for I am a husband to you. I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.

Set up a standard toward Zion. Flee for safety! Don’t wait; for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction.”

For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as of her who gives birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, saying, “Woe is me now! For my soul faints before the murderers.”

The comely and delicate one, the daughter of Zion, will I cut off.

They take hold of bow and spear. They are cruel, and have no mercy. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride on horses, everyone set in array, as a man to the battle, against you, daughter of Zion.”

Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a land that is very far off: isn’t the LORD in Zion? Isn’t her King in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their engraved images, and with foreign vanities?

For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we ruined! we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.

Have you utterly rejected Judah? has your soul loathed Zion? why have you struck us, and there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and behold, dismay!

Micah the Morashtite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah; and he spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus says the LORD of Hosts: Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.

For I will restore health to you, and I will heal you of your wounds, says the LORD; because they have called you an outcast, saying, It is Zion, whom no man seeks after.

For there shall be a day, that the watchmen on the hills of Ephraim shall cry, Arise, and let us go up to Zion to the LORD our God.

They shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow to the goodness of the LORD, to the grain, and to the new wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all.

They shall inquire concerning Zion with their faces turned toward it, saying, Come, and join yourselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that shall not be forgotten.

The voice of those who flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God, the vengeance of his temple.

The LORD has produced our righteousness: come, and let us declare in Zion the work of the LORD our God.

I will render to Babylon and to all the inhabitants of the Kasdim for all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight, says the LORD.

The violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say; and, My blood be on the inhabitants of the Kasdim, shall Jerusalem say.

The ways of Zion do mourn, because no one come to the solemn assembly; all her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh: her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.

From the daughter of Zion all her majesty is departed: her princes are become like deer that find no pasture, they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

Zion spreads out her hands; there is no one to comfort her; The LORD has commanded concerning Jacob, that those who are around him should be his adversaries: Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing.

How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger! He has cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel, And hasn’t remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.

He has bent his bow like an enemy, he has stood with his right hand as an adversary, Has killed all that were pleasant to the eye: In the tent of the daughter of Zion he has poured out his wrath like fire.

He has violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; he has destroyed his place of assembly: The LORD has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, Has despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.