Page:JPS-1917-Universal.djvu/598

---

And they hear not the voice of the cattle;

Both the fowl of the heavens and the beast

Are fled, and gone.

¹⁰And I will make Jerusalem heaps,

A lair of jackals; And I will make the cities of Judah a desolation,

Without an inhabitant.

 

¹¹Who is the wise man, that he may understand this?

And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord hath spoken, that he may declare it?

Wherefore is the land perished

And laid waste like a wilderness, so that none passeth through?

¹² And the Lord saith:

Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them,

And have not hearkened to My voice, neither walked therein;

¹³ But have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart,

And after the Baalim, which their fathers taught them.

¹⁴Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:

Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood,

And give them water of gall to drink.

¹⁵I will scatter them also among the nations,

Whom neither they nor their fathers have known;

And I will send the sword after them,

Till I have consumed them.

 

¹⁶Thus saith the Lord of hosts:

Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come;

And send for the wise women, that they may come;

¹⁷let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us,

That our eyes may run down with tears,

And our eyelids gush out with waters.

¹⁸For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion:

'How are we undone!

We are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land,

Because our dwellings have cast us out.'

¹⁹Yea, hear the word of the Lord, O ye women,

And let your ear receive the word of His mouth,

And teach your daughters wailing,

And every one her neighbour lamentation:

²⁰'For death is come up into our windows,

It is entered into our palaces,

To cut off the children from the street,

And the young men from the broad places.—

²¹Speak: Thus saith the Lord—

And the carcasses of men fall

As dung upon the open field,

And as the handful after the harvestman,

Which none gathereth.'

 

²²Thus saith the Lord:

Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,

Neither let the mighty man glory in his might,

Let not the rich man glory in his riches;

²³But let him that glorieth glory in this,

That he understandeth, and knoweth Me,

That I am the Lord who exercise mercy,

576