1. The burden concerning the valley of vision. What ails you now, that you are wholly gone up to the housetops?
2. You that are full of shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous city: your slain men are not slain with the sword, nor dead in battle.
3. All your rulers have fled together, they are captured by the archers: all that are found in you are bound together, who have fled from afar.
4. Therefore said I, Look away from me: I will weep bitterly, labor not to comfort me, because of the plundering of the daughter of my people.
5. For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by the Lord GOD of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls, and of crying to the mountains.
6. And Elam bore the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and Kir uncovered the shield.
7. And it shall come to pass, that your choicest valleys shall be full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set themselves in array at the gate.
8. And he took away the covering of Judah, and you did look in that day to the armor of the house of the forest.
9. You have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they are many: and you gathered together the waters of the lower pool.
10. And you have numbered the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses have you broken down to fortify the wall.
11. You made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool: but you have not looked unto its maker, neither had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago.
12. And in that day did the Lord GOD of hosts call for weeping, and for mourning, and for baldness, and for girding with sackcloth:
13. But instead, joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating meat, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.
14. And it was revealed in my ears by the LORD of hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till you die, says the Lord GOD of hosts.
15. Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts, Go, get you unto this steward, even unto Shebna, who is over the house, and say,
16. What have you here? and whom have you here, that you have hewed you out a sepulchre here, as he that hews him out a sepulchre on high, and that carves a tomb for himself in a rock?
17. Behold, the LORD will carry you away with a mighty captivity, and will surely sieze you.
18. He will surely violently turn and toss you like a ball into a large country: there shall you die, and there the chariots of your glory shall be the shame of your master’s house.
19. And I will drive you from your office, and from your station shall he pull you down.
20. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah:
21. And I will clothe him with your robe, and strengthen him with your belt, and I will commit your authority into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah.
22. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
23. And I will fasten him as a peg in a sure place; and he shall become a glorious throne to his father's house.
24. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the posterity, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of pitchers.
25. In that day, says the LORD of hosts, shall the peg that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall; and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off: for the LORD has spoken it.