¹⁴ Who says, I will make a wide house for myself, and rooms of great size, and has windows cut out, and has it roofed with cedar and painted with bright red.

² The king said to Nathan the prophet, See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God is housed inside the curtains of a tent.

⁴ Is it a time for you to be living in roofed houses while this house is a waste?

⁸ Cursed are those who are joining house to house, and putting field to field, till there is no more living-space for any but themselves in all the land!

⁹ The Lord of armies has said to me secretly, Truly, numbers of great and fair houses will be waste, with no one living in them.

²⁸ For which of you, desiring to put up a tower, does not first give much thought to the price, if he will have enough to make it complete?

²⁹ For fear that if he makes a start and is not able to go on with it to the end, all who see it will be laughing at him,

⁴ Though Edom says, We are crushed down but we will come back, building up the waste places; this is what the Lord of armies has said: They may put up buildings, but I will have them pulled down; and they will be named The land of evil-doing, and The people against whom the Lord keeps his wrath for ever.

³⁰ The king made answer and said, Is this not great Babylon, which I have made for the living-place of kings, by the strength of my power and for the glory of my honour?

⁹ And all the people will have experience of it, even Ephraim and the men of Samaria, who say in the pride of their uplifted hearts,

¹⁷ Cedar-trees are the pillars of our house; and our boards are made of fir-trees.

²⁷ Put your work in order outside, and make it ready in the field; and after that, see to the building of your house.

¹⁹ The lover of fighting is a lover of sin: he who makes high his doorway is looking for destruction.

⁵ And the greater house was roofed with cypress-wood, plated with the best gold and ornamented with designs of palm-trees and chains.