Children fill the once-empty city

17Your children hurry back; those who tore you down and devastated you will depart from you.

18Lift up your eyes all around and see: they all gather together; they come to you. As I live, declares Yahweh, you will surely put them all on like an ornament and bind them on like a bride.

19For your ruins, your desolate places, and your devastated land—surely now you will be too cramped for inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away.

20Yet the children of your bereavement will still say in your hearing, ‘The place is too cramped for me; make room for me so that I may dwell.’

21Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has borne these for me, since I was bereaved and barren, exiled and cast off? And these—who has raised them? Look, I was left alone; where then did these come from?’