What ails you now, that you have all gone up to the housetops,
2You who are full of noise,
A [b]tumultuous city, a joyous city?
Your slain men are not slain with the sword,
Nor dead in battle.
3All your rulers have fled together;
They are captured by the archers.
All who are found in you are bound together;
They have fled from afar.
4Therefore I said, “Look away from me,
I will weep bitterly;
Do not labor to comfort me
Because of the plundering of the daughter of my people.”

5For it is a day of trouble and treading down and perplexity
By the Lord God of hosts
In the Valley of Vision—
Breaking down the walls
And of crying to the mountain.
6Elam bore the quiver
With chariots of men and horsemen,
And Kir uncovered the shield.
7It shall come to pass that your choicest valleys
Shall be full of chariots,
And the horsemen shall set themselves in array at the gate.

8He removed the [c]protection of Judah.
You looked in that day to the armor of the House of the Forest;
9You also saw the [d]damage to the city of David,
That it was great;
And you gathered together the waters of the lower pool.
10You numbered the houses of Jerusalem,
And the houses you broke down
To fortify the wall.
11You also made a reservoir between the two walls
For the water of the old pool.
But you did not look to its Maker,
Nor did you have respect for Him who fashioned it long ago.

12And in that day the Lord God of hosts
Called for weeping and for mourning,
For baldness and for girding with sackcloth.
13But instead, joy and gladness,
Slaying oxen and killing sheep,
Eating meat and drinking wine:
“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”

14Then it was revealed in my hearing by the Lord of hosts,
“Surely for this iniquity there will be no atonement for you,
Even to your death,” says the Lord God of hosts.

“Go, proceed to this steward,
To Shebna, who is over the house, and say:
16‘What have you here, and whom have you here,
That you have hewn a sepulcher here,
As he who hews himself a sepulcher on high,
Who carves a tomb for himself in a rock?
17Indeed, the Lord will throw you away violently,
O mighty man,
And will surely seize you.
18He will surely turn violently and toss you like a ball
Into a large country;
There you shall die, and there your glorious chariots
Shall be the shame of your master’s house.
19So I will drive you out of your office,
And from your position [e]he will pull you down.

20‘Then it shall be in that day,
That I will call My servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah;
21I will clothe him with your robe
And strengthen him with your belt;
I will commit your responsibility into his hand.
He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem
And to the house of Judah.
22The key of the house of David
I will lay on his shoulder;
So he shall open, and no one shall shut;
And he shall shut, and no one shall open.
23I will fasten him as a peg in a secure place,
And he will become a glorious throne to his father’s house.