1. Thus says the Lord, I brought this people out of bondage, and I gave them my commandments by my servants the prophets; whom they would not hear, but set my counsels at nothing.
2. The mother that bare them says to them, go your way, O my children; for I am a widow and forsaken.
3. I brought you up with gladness, and with sorrow and heaviness have I lost you: for you⌃ have sinned before the Lord God, and done that which is evil before me.
4. But what shall I now do to you? for I am a widow and forsaken: go your way, O my children, and ask mercy of the Lord.
5. As for me, O father, I call upon you for a witness over the mother of these children, because they would not keep my covenant,
6. that you bring them to confusion, and their mother to a spoil, that there may be no offspring of them.
7. Let them be scattered abroad among the heathen, let their names be blotted out of the earth: for they have despised my covenant.
8. Woe to you, Assur, you that hide the unrighteous with you! O you wicked nation, remember what I did to Sodom and Gomorrah;
9. whose land lies in clods of pitch and heaps of ashes: even so also will I do to them that have not hearkened to me, says the Lord Almighty.
10. Thus says the Lord to Esdras, Tell my people that I will give them the kingdom of Jerusalem, which I would have given to Israel.
11. Their glory also will I take to me, and give these the everlasting tabernacles, which I had prepared for them.