Lexicon :: Strong's H2723 - ḥārbâ

“I will reduce your cities to ruins and devastate your sanctuaries. I will not smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices.

“But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins.

Though we are slaves, our God has not abandoned us in our slavery. He has extended grace to us in the presence of the Persian kings, giving us relief, so that we can rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem.

with the kings and counselors of the earth,

who rebuilt ruined cities for themselves,

The enemy has come to eternal ruin;

you have uprooted the cities,

and the very memory of them has perished.

I am like an eagle owl,

like a little owl among the ruins.

Let his children wander as beggars,

searching for food far[fn] from their demolished homes.

Lambs will graze

as if in[fn] their own pastures,

and resident aliens[fn] will eat

among the ruins of the rich.

who confirms the message of his servant

and fulfills the counsel of his messengers;

who says to Jerusalem, “She will be inhabited,”

and to the cities of Judah, “They will be rebuilt,”

and I will restore her ruins;

They did not thirst

when he led them through the deserts;

he made water flow from the rock for them;

he split the rock, and water gushed out.

“For your waste and desolate places

and your land marked by ruins

will now be indeed too small for the inhabitants,

and those who swallowed you up will be far away.

For the LORD will comfort Zion;

he will comfort all her waste places,

and he will make her wilderness like Eden,

and her desert like the garden of the LORD.

Joy and gladness will be found in her,

thanksgiving and melodious song.

Be joyful, rejoice together,

you ruins of Jerusalem!

For the LORD has comforted his people;

he has redeemed Jerusalem.

“Some of you will rebuild the ancient ruins;

you will restore the foundations laid long ago;

you will be called the repairer of broken walls,

the restorer of streets where people live.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins;

they will restore the former devastations;

they will renew the ruined cities,

the devastations of many generations.

Our holy and beautiful[fn] temple,

where our ancestors praised you,

has been burned down,

and all that was dear to us lies in ruins.

“I will remove from the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sound of joy and gladness and the voices of the groom and the bride, for the land will become a desolate waste.

“But if you do not obey these words, then I swear by myself ​— ​this is the LORD’s declaration ​— ​that this house will become a ruin.’ ”

“I am going to send for all the families of the north’ ​— ​this is the LORD’s declaration ​— ​‘and send for my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and I will bring them against this land, against its residents, and against all these surrounding nations, and I will completely destroy them and make them an example of horror and scorn, and ruins forever.

“This whole land will become a desolate ruin, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.

Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah, its kings and its officials, to make them a desolate ruin, an example for scorn and cursing ​— ​as it is today;

Do not listen to them. Serve the king of Babylon and live! Why should this city become a ruin?

“This is what the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says: You have seen all the disaster I brought against Jerusalem and all Judah’s cities. Look, they are a ruin today without an inhabitant in them

“So my fierce wrath poured out and burned in Judah’s cities and Jerusalem’s streets so that they became the desolate ruin they are today.

“The LORD can no longer bear your evil deeds and the detestable acts you have committed, so your land has become a waste, a desolation, and an example for cursing, without inhabitant, as you see today.

“For by myself I have sworn” ​— ​this is the LORD’s declaration ​— ​“Bozrah[fn] will become a desolation, a disgrace, a ruin, and an example for cursing, and all its surrounding cities will become ruins forever.”

“I will make you a ruin and a disgrace among the nations around you, in the sight of everyone who passes by.

“Your prophets, Israel, are like jackals among ruins.

“therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: I will stretch out my hand against Edom and cut off both people and animals from it. I will make it a wasteland; they will fall by the sword from Teman to Dedan.

“then I will bring you down to be with those who descend to the Pit, to the people of antiquity. I will make you dwell in the underworld[fn] like[fn] the ancient ruins, with those who descend to the Pit, so that you will no longer be inhabited or display your splendor[fn] in the land of the living.

“The land of Egypt will be a desolate ruin. Then they will know that I am the LORD. Because you[fn] said, “The Nile is my own; I made it,”

“Son of man, those who live in the[fn] ruins in the land of Israel are saying, ‘Abraham was only one person, yet he received possession of the land. But we are many; surely the land has been given to us as a possession.’

“Tell them this: ‘This is what the Lord GOD says: As surely as I live, those who are in the ruins will fall by the sword, those in the open field I have given to wild animals to be devoured, and those in the strongholds and caves will die by plague.

“I will turn your cities into ruins,

and you will become a desolation.

Then you will know that I am the LORD.

therefore, mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD. This is what the Lord GOD says to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys, to the desolate ruins and abandoned cities, which have become plunder and a mockery to the rest of the nations all around.

“I will fill you with people, with the whole house of Israel in its entirety. The cities will be inhabited and the ruins rebuilt.

“ ‘This is what the Lord GOD says: On the day I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the ruins will be rebuilt.

“After a long time you will be summoned. In the last years you will enter a land that has been restored from war[fn] and regathered from many peoples to the mountains of Israel, which had long been a ruin. They were brought out from the peoples, and all of them now live securely.

in order to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against ruins now inhabited and against a people gathered from the nations, who have been acquiring cattle and possessions and who live at the center of the world.

in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the books according to the word of the LORD to the prophet Jeremiah that the number of years for the desolation of Jerusalem would be seventy.

Though Edom says, “We have been devastated, but we will rebuild[fn] the ruins,” the LORD of Armies says this: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called a wicked country and the people the LORD has cursed[fn] forever.