Jeremiah 9:10-16

¶“I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, And a [funeral] dirge for the pastures of the wilderness, Because they are burned up and desolated so that no one passes through [them]; Nor can anyone hear the lowing of cattle. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they are gone. “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, A haunt and dwelling place of jackals; And I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.” Who is the wise man who may understand this [without any doubt]? To whom has the mouth of the LORD spoken, so that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined, laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? The LORD said, “Because they have turned away from My law which I set before them, and have not listened to and obeyed My voice nor walked in accordance with it, but have walked stubbornly after their [own] heart and after the Baals, as their fathers taught them,” therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “behold, I will feed them, this people, with wormwood and give them bitter and poisonous water to drink. I will [also] scatter them among nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have annihilated them.”