¹Who will give my head waters and my eye a spring of tears, that I may weep by day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people?

²Who will give me a lodging place of travelers in the wilderness, that I may leave my people and go from them? For all of them are adulterers, an assembly of treacherous ones.

³They bend their tongue, their bow, for falsehood, and not for steadiness do they prevail in the land; for from evil to evil they go forth, and me they do not know, the utterance of Yahweh.

⁴Let each man be on guard against his neighbor, and in any brother do not trust; for every brother surely grabs by the heel, and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.

⁵Each man deceives his neighbor, and truth they do not speak; they have taught their tongue to speak falsehood; they wear themselves out to pervert.

⁶Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit; in deceit they refuse to know me, the utterance of Yahweh.

⁷Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts: Here I am about to refine them and I will test them; for how can I act in the face of the daughter of my people?

⁸Their tongue is a slaughtering arrow; it speaks deceit. With his mouth he speaks wholeness with his neighbor, but in his inward part he sets his ambush.

⁹For these things shall I not visit them, the utterance of Yahweh? Or on a nation such as this, shall my being not avenge itself?

¹⁰For the mountains I will take up weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness a lament, because they are set on fire, with no one passing through; and the sound of livestock is not heard; from the bird of the skies to the beast, they have fled, they have gone.

¹¹I will make Jerusalem into heaps of stones, a dwelling place of jackals, and the cities of Judah I will make a waste, with no dweller.

¹²Who is the wise man, that he may understand this, and to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it: Why has the land perished, been set on fire like the wilderness, with no one passing through?

¹³And Yahweh said: Because they forsook my instruction, which I set before them, and did not listen to my voice and did not walk in it.

¹⁴but they walked after the stubbornness of their own heart and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them.

¹⁵Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Here I am about to feed this people wormwood, and I will give them poison water to drink.

¹⁶And I will scatter them among the nations that they did not know, they and their fathers, and I will send the sword after them until I have finished them.

¹⁷Thus says Yahweh of hosts: Consider, and summon the wailing women, that they may come; and send for the skilled women, that they may come.

¹⁸Let them hasten and take up a wailing over us, so that our eyes come down with tears, and our eyelids flow with water.

¹⁹For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: How we have been devastated! We are deeply ashamed; for we have left the land, for they have cast down our dwellings.

²⁰Hear, women, the word of Yahweh, and let your ear take the word of his mouth; and teach your daughters wailing, and each woman her neighbor a lamentation.

²¹For death has come up in our windows, has come into our palaces, to cut off the child from the street, the young men from the broad places.

²²Speak: thus the utterance of Yahweh: the corpses of people will fall like dung on the face of the field, and like cut grain behind the reaper, with no one gathering.

²³Thus Yahweh says: Let not the wise one boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty one boast in his might; let not the rich one boast in his riches.

²⁴But only in this should the boaster boast: acting wisely and knowing me, that I am Yahweh, who does loyal love, justice, and righteousness in the land; for in these I delight, the utterance of Yahweh.

²⁵Behold, days are coming, the utterance of Yahweh, and I will visit upon everyone circumcised in the foreskin:

²⁶upon Egypt, and upon Judah, and upon Edom, and upon the people of Ammon, and upon Moab, and upon all those cut off at the corner, who dwell in the wilderness; for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised of heart.