3  Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins;

the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!

4  Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place;

they set up their own signs for signs.

5  They were like those who swing axes

in a forest of trees.¹

6  And all its ^tcarved wood

they broke down with hatchets and hammers.

7  They ^uset your sanctuary on fire;

they profaned the dwelling place of your name,

bringing it down to the ground.

8  They said to themselves, ^v“We will utterly subdue them”;

they burned all the meeting places of God in the land.