4 What can I do for you, now that I am a widow and left completely alone? Go, my children, and ask the Lord for mercy.’
5 “Father Ezra, I call on you to testify against these people as their mother has done, because they have refused to keep my covenant.
6 Now bring confusion on them and ruin on their mother, so that they will have no descendants.
7 They will be scattered among the nations, and no one on earth will remember them any longer, for they have despised my covenant.
8 “How terrible will be your punishment, Assyria. You have let wicked people hide within your borders. Remember, sinful nation, what I did to Sodom and Gomorrah.
9 Their land now lies covered with lumps of tar and heaps of ashes. That is what I do to people who do not obey me.
10 “The Lord says to Ezra: announce to my new people that I will give them the kingdom of Jerusalem, which I had planned to give to Israel.