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⁶For a nation has invaded my land, powerful and innumerable; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. ⁷It has laid waste my vines, and splintered my fig trees; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches have turned white.

⁸Lament like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth. ⁹The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. ¹⁰The fields are devastated, the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil fails. ¹¹Be dismayed, you farmers, wail, you vinedressers, over the wheat and the barley; for the crops of the field are ruined. ¹²The vine withers, the fig tree droops. Pomegranate, palm, and apple— all the trees of the field are dried up; surely, joy withers away among the people. ¹³Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests; wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, pass the night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God! Grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. ¹⁵Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes. ¹⁶Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? ¹⁷The seed shrivels under the clods, the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are ruined because the grain has failed. ¹⁸How the animals groan! The herds of cattle wander about because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep are dazed. ¹⁹To you, O Lord, I cry. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flames have burned all the trees of the field. ²⁰Even the wild animals cry to you because the watercourses are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.