"Prepare war against her; / Rise up, and let us go up at noon./...Rise up, and let us go up at night / And destroy her palaces" (vv. 4-5). In these verses God speaks to the Babylonians. He will use them in His correction of Israel.
"Be admonished, O Jerusalem, / Lest My desire for you depart, / Lest I make you a desolation, / An uninhabited land" (v. 8). This indicates that, through the Babylonians, the Husband would make her a desolation and a land that is no longer inhabitable.
The enemy will thoroughly glean her remnant like a vine; they will pass their hand again over her branches like a grape gatherer (v. 9). The houses of Israel will be turned over to others, fields and wives together, and the Husband will stretch out His hand over her inhabitants (v. 12). God will stretch out His hand to chastise them.
In verse 9 we have a figure of speech: a vineyard with its grapevines. According to God's law, once the grapes were harvested, no one was allowed to pick the gleanings, for the remnant of the grape harvest was to be for the poor. However, the Babylonians would harvest the "grapes" from the "vine" of Israel, and then come again to glean the vine thoroughly. This means that they would come more than once to take the people captive.
"Listen, O earth; I am now bringing evil / On this people... /I am now laying before this people stumbling blocks, / And fathers and sons together / Will stumble against them; / A neighbor and his friend will perish" (vv. 19, 21). On the one hand, Jehovah would bring evil, calamity, upon Israel; on the other hand, He would set up stumbling blocks before the people in order to stumble them.
This chapter discloses the Husband's determination in His reaction to the wife's evils (vv. 6-7, 10, 13, 15, 19-21, 28-30). Her actions were evil, and God's punishment was His reaction to these evil actions.
As I conclude this message, I would like to summarize chapters two through six in a simple way. In chapters two through four is Jehovah's major complaint, against His wife's apostasy, spiritual fornication—idolatry, by which she broke the first four commandments of the law concerning God. In chapters five and six is Jehovah's minor complaint, against His wife's evil conduct, by which she broke the last five commandments of the law concerning men. Israel broke the first four commandments by worshipping idols and the last five commandments by not executing justice or seeking faithfulness.