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¹⁷Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider, and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skilled women to come; ¹⁸let them quickly raise a dirge over us, so that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids flow with water. ¹⁹For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: “How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed, because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.” ²⁰Hear, O women, the word of the Lord, and let your ears receive the word of his mouth; teach to your daughters a dirge, and each to her neighbor a lament. ²¹“Death has come up into our windows, it has entered our palaces, to cut off the children from the streets and the young men from the squares.” ²²Speak! Thus says the Lord: “Human corpses shall fall like dung upon the open field, like sheaves behind the reaper, and no one shall gather them.”

²³Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; ²⁴but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord. ²⁵The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will attend to all those who are circumcised only in the foreskin: ²⁶Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all those with shaven temples who live in the desert. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.