12 Who is wise enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the Lord and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no one can cross?
13 The Lord said, ‘It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law.
14 Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their ancestors taught them.’
15 Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘See, I will make this people eat bitter food and drink poisoned water.
16 I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors have known, and I will pursue them with the sword until I have made an end of them.’
17 This is what the Lord Almighty says:‘Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come;send for the most skilful of them.
18 Let them come quicklyand wail over ustill our eyes overflow with tearsand water streams from our eyelids.