אֵיךְ

For My own sake, My very own sake, I will act; for how can I let Myself be defamed? I will not yield My glory to another.

I had planted you like a choice vine from the very best seed. How could you turn yourself before Me into a rotten, wild vine?

“How can you say, ‘I am not defiled; I have not run after the Baals’? Look at your behavior in the valley; acknowledge what you have done. You are a swift young she-camel galloping here and there,

Then I said, ‘How I long to make you My sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of all the nations!’ I thought you would call Me ‘Father’ and never turn away from following Me.

How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the Law of the LORD is with us,’ when in fact the lying pen of the scribes has produced a deception?

Therefore this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do because of the daughter of My people?

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.’”

“If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in a peaceful land, how will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?

“Tell us now,” they asked Baruch, “how did you write all these words? Was it at Jeremiah’s dictation?”

How can it rest when the LORD has commanded it? He has appointed it against Ashkelon and the shore of its coastland.”

How can you say, ‘We are warriors, mighty men ready for battle’?

Mourn for him, all you who surround him, everyone who knows his name; tell how the mighty scepter is shattered—the glorious staff!

“How shattered it is! How they wail! How Moab has turned his back in shame! Moab has become an object of ridicule and horror to all those around him.”

How is the city of praise not forsaken, the town that brings Me joy?

How the hammer of the whole earth lies broken and shattered! What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!

How Sheshach has been captured! The praise of all the earth has been seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!

How lonely lies the city, once so full of people! She who was great among the nations has become a widow. The princess of the provinces has become a slave.

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.

How the gold has become tarnished, the pure gold has become dull! The gems of the temple lie scattered on every street corner.

How the precious sons of Zion, once worth their weight in pure gold, are now esteemed as jars of clay, the work of a potter’s hands!

Then they will lament for you, saying, “How you have perished, O city of renown inhabited by seafaring men—she who was powerful on the sea, along with her people, who imposed terror on all peoples!

Now as for you, son of man, tell the house of Israel that this is what they have said: ‘Our transgressions and our sins are heavy upon us, and we are wasting away because of them! How can we live?’

How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!

“If thieves came to you, if robbers by night—oh, how you will be ruined—would they not steal only what they wanted? If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave some gleanings?

But how Esau will be pillaged, his hidden treasures sought out!

In that day they will take up a proverb against you and taunt you with this bitter lamentation: ‘We are utterly ruined! He has changed the portion of my people. How He has removed it from me! He has allotted our fields to traitors.’”

This carefree city that dwells securely, that thinks to herself: “I am it, and there is none besides me,” what a ruin she has become, a resting place for beasts. Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.