[1] The oracle concerning the valley of vision. What do you mean that you have gone up, all of you, to the housetops,
[2] you who are full of shoutings, tumultuous city, exultant town? Your slain are not slain with the sword or dead in battle.
[3] All your leaders have fled together; without the bow they were captured. All of you who were found were captured, though they had fled far away.
[4] Therefore I said: “Look away from me; let me weep bitter tears; do not labor to comfort me concerning the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
[5] For the Lord God of hosts has a day of tumult and trampling and confusion in the valley of vision, a battering down of walls and a shouting to the mountains.
[6] And Elam bore the quiver with chariots and horsemen, and Kir uncovered the shield.
[7] Your choicest valleys were full of chariots, and the horsemen took their stand at the gates.
[8] He has taken away the covering of Judah. In that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest,
[9] and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many. You collected the waters of the lower pool,
[10] and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall.
[11] You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or see him who planned it long ago.
[12] In that day the Lord God of hosts called for weeping and mourning, for baldness and wearing sackcloth;
[13] and behold, joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
[14] The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears: “Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for you until you die,” says the Lord God of hosts.
[15] Thus says the Lord God of hosts, “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, and say to him:
[16] “What have you to do here, and whom have you here, that you have cut out here a tomb for yourself, you who cut out a tomb on the height and carve a dwelling for yourself in the rock?
[17] “Behold, the Lord will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you
[18] “and whirl you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a wide land. There you shall die, and there shall be your glorious chariots, you shame of your master’s house.
[19] “I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your station.
[20] “In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah,
[21] “and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your sash on him, and will commit your authority to his hand. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.
[22] “And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
[23] “And I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father’s house.
[24] “And they will hang on him the whole honor of his father’s house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons.
[25] “In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a secure place will give way, and it will be cut down and fall, and the load that was on it will be cut off, for the Lord has spoken.”