6The time is coming when Jacob’s descendants will take root.

Israel will bud and blossom

and fill the whole earth with fruit!

7Has the Lord struck Israel

as he struck her enemies?

Has he punished her

as he punished them?

8No, but he exiled Israel to call her to account.

She was exiled from her land

as though blown away in a storm from the east.

9The Lord did this to purge Israel’s^b wickedness,

to take away all her sin.

As a result, all the pagan altars will be crushed to dust.

No Asherah pole or pagan shrine will be left standing.

10The fortified towns will be silent and empty,

the houses abandoned, the streets overgrown with weeds.

Calves will graze there,

chewing on twigs and branches.

11The people are like the dead branches of a tree,

broken off and used for kindling beneath the cooking pots.

Israel is a foolish and stupid nation,

for its people have turned away from God.

Therefore, the one who made them

will show them no pity or mercy.

12Yet the time will come when the Lord will gather them together like handpicked grain. One by one he will gather them—from the Euphrates River^c in the east to the Brook of Egypt in the west. 13In that day the great trumpet will sound. Many who were dying in exile in Assyria and Egypt will return to Jerusalem to worship the Lord on his holy mountain.