Psalm 137

¹In the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was among the exiles by the River Kebar, the heavens opened and I saw visions of God.

¹⁵I came to the exiles at Tel-abib who dwelt by the River Kebar. And for seven days I sat where they sat and remained there among them, overwhelmed.

¹⁰The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.

¹¹My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

⁴⁸Streams of tears flow from my eyes over the destruction of the daughter of my people.

¹⁸The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, and your eyes no rest.

³the word of the Lord came directly to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the River Kebar. And there the Lord’s hand was upon him.

¹³So I will silence the sound of your songs, and the music of your lyres will no longer be heard.

⁸The joyful tambourines have ceased; the noise of revelers has stopped; the joyful harp is silent.

²²And the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will never ring out in you again. Nor will any craftsmen of any trade be found in you again, nor the sound of a millstone be heard in you again.

²Lift up a song, strike the tambourine, play the sweet-sounding harp and lyre.

¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.

²Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to Him with ten strings.

⁶“As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

¹⁴that I may declare all Your praises—that within the gates of Daughter Zion I may rejoice in Your salvation.

¹⁵All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

¹⁶All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see it!”

¹²Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.

¹¹“And I will make Jerusalem a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

⁶You make us contend with our neighbors; our enemies mock us.

³“In that day,” declares the Lord God, “the songs of the temple will turn to wailing. Many will be the corpses, strewn in silence everywhere!”

¹²On that day the Lord God of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.

⁴They will not pour out wine offerings to the Lord, and their sacrifices will not please Him, but will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat will be defiled. For their bread will be for themselves; it will not enter the house of the Lord.

¹⁴The elders have left the city gate; the young men have stopped their music.

¹⁵Joy has left our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning.

⁴a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,

²¹Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has begotten these for me? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. So who has reared them? Look, I was left all alone, so where did they come from?’”

¹⁰Now when Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house, where the windows of his upper room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

¹¹Then these men went as a group and found Daniel petitioning and imploring his God.

⁵⁰You who have escaped the sword, depart and do not linger! Remember the Lord from far away, and let Jerusalem come to mind.”

⁵For there the thrones of judgment stand, the thrones of the house of David.

⁶Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May those who love you prosper.

¹⁰For better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

¹⁷Woe to the worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock! May a sword strike his arm and his right eye! May his arm be completely withered and his right eye utterly blinded!”

¹For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep still, until her righteousness shines like a bright light, her salvation like a blazing torch.

²⁶I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth, and you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, though they are a rebellious house.

¹⁵My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death.

¹⁰The voices of the nobles were hushed, and their tongues stuck to the roofs of their mouths.

¹⁷The poor and needy seek water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. I, the Lord, will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.

¹⁰For better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

⁴The nursing infant’s tongue clings in thirst to the roof of his mouth. Little children beg for bread, but no one gives them any.

²¹So rejoice and be glad, O Daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz. Yet the cup will pass to you as well; you will get drunk and expose yourself.

²²O Daughter of Zion, your punishment is complete; He will not prolong your exile. But He will punish your iniquity, O Daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins.

¹²This is what the Lord God says: ‘Because Edom acted vengefully against the house of Judah, and in so doing incurred grievous guilt,

¹³therefore this is what the Lord God says: I will stretch out My hand against Edom and cut off from it both man and beast. I will make it a wasteland, and from Teman to Dedan they will fall by the sword.

⁷Concerning Edom, this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Is there no longer wisdom in Teman? Has counsel perished from the prudent? Has their wisdom decayed?

⁸Turn and run! Lie low, O dwellers of Dedan, for I will bring disaster on Esau at the time I punish him.

¹⁰Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame and cut off forever.

¹¹On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gate and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were just like one of them.

¹³You went forth for the salvation of Your people, to save Your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked and stripped him from head to toe. Selah

²“Son of man, set your face against Mount Seir and prophesy against it,

⁶Give back to her as she has done to others; pay her back double for what she has done; mix her a double portion in her own cup.

¹²But when seventy years are complete, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their guilt, declares the Lord, and I will make it an everlasting desolation.

¹³I will bring upon that land all the words I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations.

⁴you will sing this song of contempt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has ceased, and how his fury has ended!

⁵The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers.

⁸Then a second angel followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, who has made all the nations drink the wine of the passion of her immorality.”

⁹And a third angel followed them, calling out in a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on his forehead or on his hand,

¹This is the burden against the Desert by the Sea: Like whirlwinds sweeping through the Negev, an invader comes from the desert, from a land of terror.

¹“Go down and sit in the dust, O Virgin Daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a throne, O Daughter of the Chaldeans! For you will no longer be called tender or delicate.

²Take millstones and grind flour; remove your veil; strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, and wade through the streams.

¹⁶Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes, their houses will be looted, and their wives will be ravished.

¹⁶Samaria will bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.

¹⁰Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity. Her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every street. They cast lots for her dignitaries, and all her nobles were bound in chains.

¹²“Why is my lord weeping?” asked Hazael. “Because I know the evil you will do to the Israelites,” Elisha replied. “You will set fire to their fortresses, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little ones to pieces, and rip open their pregnant women.”

¹⁴the roar of battle will rise against your people, so that all your fortresses will be demolished as Shalman devastated Beth-arbel in the day of battle, when mothers were dashed to pieces along with their children.