University of Virginia Library


165

The Judgment.

Thus sayeth Jehovah, the Lord:
Go speak to the mountains of Zion,
Yea, cry to the valleys and waters:
Behold, I arrive with a sword,
Behold, I come up like a lion;
I come to destroy your high places,
To spoil and defile them with slaughters.
Your idols shall fall on their faces,
Your altars shall totter and crumble,
Your soothsaying prophets shall die,
And there, where your graven gods tumble,
The slain of your people shall lie.
The hand of my fury shall blight
And wither and utterly humble
The oaks of your heathen delight,
The beautiful groves that ye cherish.
The breath of my anger shall waste
Your armies with sudden affright
And fill your strongholds with amaze.
Your populous cities shall perish,
The warders shall fall in their haste,
Shall stumble and die in their flight
And cumber with corpses the ways.
Yea, mingled with imageries shattered
In temples and groves and by waters;
Yea, piled around altars bespattered
By victims of Baalim abhorred;
The bones of your sons and your daughters
Shall whiten unburied and scattered,
To witness that I am the Lord.