2. Who will give me in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, and I will leave my people, and depart from them? because they are all adulterers, an assembly of transgressors.
3. And they have bent their tongue, as a bow, for lies, and not for truth: they have strengthened themselves upon the earth, for they have proceeded from evil to evil, and me they have not known, saith the Lord.
4. Let every man take heed of his neighbor, and let his not trust in any brother of his: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every friend will walk deceitfully.
5. And a man shall mock his brother, and they will not speak the truth: for they have taught their tongue to speak lies: they have laboured to commit iniquity.
6. Thy habitation is in the midst of deceit: Through deceit they have refused to know me, saith the Lord.
7. Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Behold I will melt, and try them: for what else shall I do before the daughter of my people?
8. Their tongue is a piercing arrow, it hath spoken deceit: with his mouth one speaketh peace with his friend, and secretly he lieth in wait for him.
9. Shall I not visit them for these things, saith the Lord? or shall not my soul be revenged on such a nation?
10. For the mountains I will take up weeping and lamentation, and for the beautiful places of the desert, mourning: because they are burnt up, for that there is not a man that passeth through them: and they have not heard the voice of the owner: from the fowl of the air to the beasts they are gone away and departed.
11. And I will make Jerusalem to be heaps of sand, and dens of dragons: and I will make the cities of Juda desolate, for want of an inhabitant.
12. Who is the wise man, that may understand this, and to whom the word of the mouth of the Lord may come that he may declare this, why the land hath perished, and is burnt up like a wilderness, which none passeth through?
13. And the Lord said: Because they have forsaken my law, which I gave them, and have not heard my voice, and have not walked in it.
14. But they have gone after the perverseness of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them.
15. Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Behold I will feed this people with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.
16. And I will scatter them among the nations, which they and their fathers have not known: and I will send the sword after them till they be consumed.
17. Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, and let them come: and send to them that are wise women, and let them make haste:
18. Let them hasten and take up a lamentation for us: let our eyes shed tears, and our eyelids run down with waters.