Lamentations 1 Cross References - ISV

¹ The Sorrowful City How lonely she lies, the city that thronged with people! Like a widow she has become, this great one among nations! The princess among provinces has become a vassal. ² Bitterly she cries in the night, as tears stream down her cheeks. No one consoles her of all her friends. All her neighbors have betrayed her; they have become her enemies. ³ Judah has gone into exile to escape affliction and servitude. She that sat among the nations, has found no rest. All her pursuers overtook her amid narrow passes. ⁴ The roads that lead to Zion are in mourning, because no one travels to the festivals. All her gates are desolate; her priests are moaning. Her young women are grieving, and she is bitter. ⁵ Her adversaries dominate her, her enemies prosper. For the LORD has made her suffer because of her many transgressions. Her children have gone away, taken into captivity in the presence of the enemy. ⁶ Fled from cherished Zion are all that were her splendor. Her princes have become like deer that cannot find their feeding grounds. They flee with strength exhausted from their pursuers. ⁷ Jerusalem remembers her time of affliction and misery; all her valued belongings of days gone by, when her people fell into enemy hands, with no one to help her, and her enemies stared at her, mocking her downfall. ⁸ Jerusalem sinned greatly, and she became unclean. All who honored her now despise her, because they saw her naked. She herself groans and turns her face away. ⁹ Uncleanness has soiled her skirts, and she gave no thought to what would follow. She fell in such a startling way, with no one to comfort her. Look, LORD, upon my affliction, because my enemy is boasting. ¹⁰ The adversary seized in his hands everything she valued. She watched the nations enter her sanctuary; those you forbade to enter your place of meeting. ¹¹ All her people groaned as they searched for food. They traded their valuables in order to eat, to keep themselves alive. Look, LORD, and see how I have become dishonored. ¹² May it not befall you, all who pass along the road! Look and see: Is there any grief like my grief dealt out to me, by which the LORD afflicted me in the time of his fierce wrath? ¹³ He sent fire from on high, making it penetrate my bones. He stretched out a net at my feet, forcing me to turn back. He made me desolate; I’m fainting all day long. ¹⁴ The yoke of my sins was bound on, fastened together by his hand. They settled on my neck; he caused my strength to fail. The LORD placed me in the power of those I cannot resist. ¹⁵ He rejected all the valiant men— the LORD, in my midst. He set a time to meet with me to crush my young warriors. The LORD has trampled, as in a winepress, the fair virgin that is Judah. ¹⁶ Because of all this, I weep; my eyes stream with tears because far from me is the comforter of my soul. My children are sorrowful, because the enemy has won. ¹⁷ Zion spreads out her hands; no one is there to comfort her. The LORD has issued an order against Jacob, that all who are around him are to be his enemies; Jerusalem has become unclean among them. ¹⁸ The LORD is in the right, but I rebelled against his commands. Listen, please, all you people, and look at my pain— my young men and women have gone into captivity. ¹⁹ I called out to my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders have died within the city while looking for something to eat to keep themselves alive. ²⁰ Look, LORD, how distressed I am; all my insides are churning. My heart is troubled within me, because I vigorously rebelled. Outside the sword brings loss of life, while at home death rules. ²¹ People heard how I groan, with no one to comfort me. All my adversaries have heard about my troubles; they rejoice that you have caused them. Bring on the day you have promised, so my adversaries will become like me. ²² May all of their wickedness come to your attention, and deal with them as you have done with me because of all my transgressions. For I am constantly groaning, and my heart is faint.

²¹ Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the territory of the Philistines and south to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon throughout his lifetime.

³³ Pharaoah Neco placed him in custody at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, so that he would not reign in Jerusalem, and imposed a tribute of 100 talents of silver and a talent of gold.

³⁵ As a result, Jehoiakim paid the silver and gold tribute to Pharaoh, but he passed on the costs to the inhabitants of the land in taxes, in keeping with Pharaoh’s orders. He exacted the silver and gold from the people who lived in the land, from each according to his assessment, in order to pay it to Pharaoh Neco.

²⁶ King Solomon ruled over all the kings from the Euphrates River west to the land of the Philistines and as far south as the boundary with Egypt.

²⁰ Powerful kings have reigned over Jerusalem, including ruling over all lands beyond the Euphrates River. Furthermore, taxes, tribute, and tolls have been paid to them.

⁴ Still others were saying “We’ve borrowed money against our fields and vineyards to pay the king’s taxes.

³⁷ But now its abundant produce belongs to the kings whom you placed over us because of our sin. They also have power over our bodies and our herds at their pleasure, and we are in great distress.

⁴ To it the tribes ascend— the tribes of the LORD— as decreed to Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.

²⁶ and her gates lament and mourn. Ravaged, she will sit on the ground.”

¹² The Fall of the Day Star“How you have fallen from heaven, Day Star, son of the Dawn! How you have been thrown down to earth, you who laid low the nation!

² you who are full of commotion, you passionate city, you rollicking town? Your slain weren’t killed by the sword, nor are they dead in battle.

¹ The Fall of Babylon “Come down and sit in the dust, Virgin Daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a chair, Daughter of the Chaldeans! For no longer will they call you tender and attractive. ² Take millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, strip off your robes, bare your legs, and wade through the rivers. ³ Your nakedness will be exposed, and your disgrace will also be seen. I’ll take vengeance, and I will spare no mortal. ⁴ “Our Redeemer— the LORD of the Heavenly Armies is his name— is the Holy One of Israel. ⁵ “Sit silent, and enter into the darkness, you daughter of the Chaldeans; for no more will they call you Queen of Kingdoms. ⁶ I was angry with my people, and I desecrated my heritage, and gave them into your control. You showed them no mercy; even on the aged you laid your yoke most heavily. ⁷ You said, ‘I will always continue—Queen forever!’ You didn’t take these things into your thinking, nor did you think about their consequences. ⁸ “Now hear this, you wanton creature, lounging with no cares, and saying to herself: ‘I am the one, and there will be none besides me; I won’t live as a widow, nor will I see the loss of children.’ ⁹ Both of these things will overtake you suddenly on a single day: loss of children and widowhood. They will come upon you in full measure, despite the multitude of your incantations and the great power of your spells.”
¹⁰ Self-Deception of the Babylonians“You trusted in your own knowledge. You said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge have misled you. You said in your heart, ‘I am the one, and there will be none besides me.’ ¹¹ “But disaster will come upon you, and you will not know how to charm it away. A calamity will befall you that you will not be able to ward off; and devastation will come upon you suddenly, and you won’t anticipate it. ¹² “But stand up now with your spells and your many incantations, at which you have labored from your childhood until today, ¹³ according to your multiple schemes. Let them stand up now— those who conjure the heavens and gaze at the stars, predicting at the new moons— and save you from what is about to happen to them. ¹⁴ “See, they are just like stubble; fire burns them up. They could not even save themselves from the power of the flame. There will be no coals for warming oneself, no fire to sit by. ¹⁵ So will they be to you—those with whom you toiled and did business since your childhood— they wander about, each in his own direction; there is not one who can save you.

⁵ My Lord GOD has opened my ears, and I did not rebel; I did not shrink back.

² Shake yourself from the dust and arise, and sit on your throne, O Jerusalem! Loosen the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

⁷ “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the one who brings news of peace, who announces good things, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’

⁴ “Don’t be afraid, because you won’t be ashamed; don’t fear shame, for you won’t be humiliated— because you will forget the disgrace of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.

¹¹ “I’ll make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a refuge for jackals. I’ll make the towns of Judah desolate, without inhabitants.”

⁹ Ahikam’s son Gedaliah, the grandson of Shaphan, swore an oath to them and their men: “Don’t be afraid to serve the Chaldeans. Remain in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and things will go well for you.

²³ How the hammer of all the earth is cut off and broken! How Babylon has become a horror among the nations!

¹ The Condition of Israel How the Lord in his wrath shamed cherished Zion! He cast down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, He did not remember his footstool in the time of his anger.

¹⁰ The leaders of cherished Zion sit silently on the ground; they throw dust on their heads and dress in mourning clothes. The young women of Jerusalem bow their heads in sorrow.

¹ Zion’s Punishment How tarnished the gold has become, the finest gold debased! Sacred stones have been scattered at every street corner.

¹⁶ The crown has fallen from our head— woe to us, because we have sinned!

¹⁶ That’s when all the kings of the seafaring nations will abandon their thrones, strip off their fancy clothes, and collapse trembling on the ground. They’ll be so frightened as they observe what has happened to you that they’ll be unable to stop trembling. They will be utterly appalled at you!

¹⁵ This is that carefree city that lived irresponsibly, that told herself, ‘Me first!’ and, ‘There will be no one else!’ How ruined she has become— a habitat for wild animals! Everyone who passes by her will sneer at her and make obscene gestures!”

⁴ “This is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies says: ‘There will yet be old men and old women sitting in the parks of Jerusalem, each one of them holding canes in their hands due to their old age! ⁵ The city parks will be filled with boys and girls. They will play in the city’s open parks.’

⁷ Just as she glorified herself and lived in luxury, inflict on her just as much torture and misery. In her heart she says, ‘I am a queen on a throne, not a widow. I will never see misery.’

¹⁶ “How terrible, how terrible it is for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, purple, and scarlet and was adorned with gold, gems, and pearls, ¹⁷ because all this wealth has been destroyed in a single hour!”
Every ship’s captain, everyone who traveled by ship, sailors, and everyone who made a living from the sea stood far away.

¹⁵ But my brothers have acted treacherously like a cascading river, like torrential rivers that overflow.

³ Truly I’ve been allotted months of emptiness; nights of trouble have been appointed for me.

¹³ Job’s Family and Friends Abandoned Him“My brothers are alienated from me; my acquaintances are estranged; ¹⁴ my relatives have failed me; and my friends have abandoned me.

⁶ I am weary from my groaning. Every night my couch is drenched with tears, my bed is soaked through.

¹¹ I have become an object of reproach to all my enemies, especially to my neighbors. I have become an object of fear to my friends, and whoever sees me outside runs away from me.

² When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; my hands were raised at night and they did not grow weary. I refused to be comforted. ³ I remember God, and I groan; I meditate, while my spirit grows faint. Interlude ⁴ You kept my eyes open; I was troubled and couldn’t speak. ⁵ I thought of ancient times, considering years long past. ⁶ During the night I remembered my song. I meditate in my heart, and my spirit ponders.

⁷ All the relatives of a poor person shun him— how much more do his friends avoid him! Though he runs after them pleading, they aren’t around.

¹⁸ There is no one to guide you out of all the children she bore, no one to take her by the hand out of all the children she brought up. ¹⁹ “These twin things have come upon you (who can feel sorry for you?): ruin and destruction, famine and the sword— who can console you?

¹ God Contemplates Divorcing Israel “When a man divorces his wife, she leaves him and becomes another man’s wife, will the first husband return to her again? The land would be deeply polluted, would it not? Since you have committed fornication with many lovers, would you now return to me?” declares the LORD.

³⁰ You are ruined! What are you doing dressing in scarlet, putting on golden ornaments, and highlighting your eyes with makeup? You are making yourself beautiful in vain. Your lovers reject you— they’re out to kill you.

¹ The LORD’s Sorrow for His People “Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, for then I would cry day and night for those of my people who have been killed.

¹⁷ A Call to LamentThis is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies says: “Think about what I’m saying! Indeed, call out the professional mourners! Send for the best of them to come. ¹⁸ Let them hurry and lament for us. Let tears run down from our eyes, and let our eyelids flow with water. ¹⁹ For a sound of mourning is heard from Zion: ‘How we’re ruined! Our shame is very great, because we have left the land, because our houses are torn down.’”

¹⁷ If you don’t listen, I’ll cry secretly because of your pride. My eyes will cry bitterly, flowing tears, because the LORD’s flock has been taken captive.

²⁰ An Oracle against JerusalemGo up to Lebanon and cry out, to Bashan and lift up your voice. Cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers have been crushed. ²¹ I spoke to you when you were secure, but you said, “I won’t listen!” This has been your way since your youth, for you haven’t obeyed me. ²² The wind will shepherd all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into exile. Indeed, you will then be ashamed and humiliated because of all your wickedness.

¹⁴ All your lovers have forgotten you; they don’t seek you. Indeed, I’ve struck you down with the blow of an enemy, with the punishment of a cruel foe because your wickedness is great, and your sins are numerous.

⁹ Uncleanness has soiled her skirts, and she gave no thought to what would follow. She fell in such a startling way, with no one to comfort her. Look, LORD, upon my affliction, because my enemy is boasting.

¹⁶ Because of all this, I weep; my eyes stream with tears because far from me is the comforter of my soul. My children are sorrowful, because the enemy has won. ¹⁷ Zion spreads out her hands; no one is there to comfort her. The LORD has issued an order against Jacob, that all who are around him are to be his enemies; Jerusalem has become unclean among them.

¹⁹ I called out to my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders have died within the city while looking for something to eat to keep themselves alive.

²¹ People heard how I groan, with no one to comfort me. All my adversaries have heard about my troubles; they rejoice that you have caused them. Bring on the day you have promised, so my adversaries will become like me.

¹¹ My eyes are worn out from crying, my insides are churning, My emotions pour out in grief because my people are destroyed— Children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

¹⁸ Cry out from your heart to the Lord, wall of fair Zion! Let your tears run down like a river day and night. Allow yourself no rest, and don’t stop crying. ¹⁹ Get up and cry aloud in the night, at the beginning of every hour. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord! Lift up your hands toward him for the lives of your children, who are fainting away at every street corner.

³⁷ therefore, watch out! I’m about to gather all your lovers from whom you’ve received your pleasure, everyone whom you’ve loved, and those whom you’ve hated. I’ll gather them together to oppose you from every side, and they’ll uncover your nakedness in their presence. Then they’ll see you completely naked.

²² God’s Rebuke to Jerusalem“Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Look! I’m about to stir up your lovers against you, the ones from whom you’ve turned away in disgust. I’m going to bring them against you from every direction— ²³ the Babylonians, all the Chaldeans, Pekod, Shoa, Koa, and all of the Assyrians with them. They’re all desirable young men, governors, commanders, chariot officers, and famous men, all of them mounted on horses.
²⁴ “‘They’ll invade you with weapons, chariots, wagons, and a vast army. They’ll set themselves in place to attack you from every direction with large shields, small shields, and helmets. I’ll turn over judgment to them, and they’ll punish you according to their own standards. ²⁵ I’ll expend my jealousy on you so they’ll deal with you in anger. They’ll cut off your noses and your ears. Your survivors will die violently. They’ll take your sons and daughters away from you, but your survivors will be incinerated.

⁷ She will pursue her lovers, but she won’t catch up with them. She will seek them, but she won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I’ll go back and return to my first husband, because it was better for me then than now.’

⁵ Don’t trust your friends, don’t confide in a companion, watch what you say to your wife.

¹³ They have one purpose: to give their power and authority to the beast.

¹⁶ The ten horns and the beast you saw will hate the prostitute. They will leave her abandoned and naked. They will eat her flesh and burn her up with fire,

³⁶ “As for the remnants among you, I’ll bring despair in their hearts in the land of their enemies so that even the sound of a blown leaf will chase them and they flee as though pursued by the sword and fall when no one is pursuing. ³⁷ They’ll stumble over each other as though fleeing before the sword, even though no one is pursuing.
“You won’t have power to resist your enemies. ³⁸ You’ll perish among the nations and the land of your enemies will consume you. ³⁹ The remnants among you will waste away in the land of your enemies due to their iniquity. Indeed, they’ll also waste away on account of the iniquities of their ancestors with them.”

⁶⁴ Scattering among the Nations“He’ll scatter you among the peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you’ll serve other gods made of wood and stones, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. ⁶⁵ Among those nations you’ll have no rest. There’ll be no resting place for the soles of your feet. Instead, the LORD will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a despairing spirit. ⁶⁶ You’ll cling to life, being fearful by both night and day, with no assurance of survival. ⁶⁷ In the morning you’ll say, ‘I wish it were evening.’ Yet in the evening you’ll say, “I wish it were morning,” on account of what you’ll dread and what you’ll see.

¹⁴ Then Nebuchadnezzar sent away into exile all of Jerusalem—all the captains, all the valiant soldiers, 10,000 captives, and all of the craftsmen and ironworkers. Nobody remained except the poorest people of the land. ¹⁵ He sent Jehoiachin into exile to Babylon, along with the king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officials, and the leading men of the land. He took them into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

¹¹ Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, carried the survivors of the people who remained in the city, those who had deserted to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude into exile.

²¹ where the king of Babylon executed them in the land of Hamath. And so Judah was transported into exile from the land.

²⁰ Nebuchadnezzar carried off to Babylon those who survived the executions, and they served him and his descendants until the kingdom of Persia came to power. ²¹ All of this fulfilled what the LORD had predicted through Jeremiah. And so the land enjoyed its Sabbaths, and the length of the land’s desolation lasted until a 70-year long Sabbath had been completed.

¹⁹ The towns in the Negev will be closed up, and there will be no one to open them. All Judah will be taken into exile and be completely exiled.

¹⁶ “I’m about to send many fishermen,” declares the LORD, “and they’ll catch them. Afterwards, I’ll send for many hunters and they’ll hunt for them on every mountain and hill and in the crevices of the rocks.

⁹ I’ll make them into a horrifying sight to all the kingdoms of the earth; into a cause for contempt, into a byword, into a taunt, and into a curse in all the places to which I drive them.

⁹ Nebuzaradan, the captain of the Babylonian guard, took into exile in Babylon the rest of the people who remained in the city, those who had deserted to Nebuchadnezzar, and the rest of the people who remained.

⁸ The Chaldean army went after the king, overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, and all his troops were scattered from him.

¹⁵ Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile some of the poorest of the people, the rest of the people left in the city, the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the craftsmen.

²⁷ The king of Babylon struck them down and killed them at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah went into exile from the land.
²⁸ These are the people Nebuchadnezzar took into exile: in the seventh year, 3,023 Judeans; ²⁹ in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year, 832 people from Jerusalem; ³⁰ in Nebuchadnezzar’s twenty-third year, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took 745 people from Judah into exile. All the people taken into exile numbered 4,600.

⁹ Jerusalem’s gates collapsed to the ground; he destroyed and broke the bars of her gates. Both king and prince have gone into captivity. There is no instruction, and the prophets receive no vision from the LORD.

¹⁸ Our steps were closely stalked, so we couldn’t travel on our own streets. Our end is near, our days are over; indeed, our end has come. ¹⁹ Our pursuers were swifter than soaring eagles; they pursued us over the mountains, lying in wait for us in the wilderness.

¹² A third of you will die by pestilence, starving because of the famine in your midst. Another third will die violently by the violence of war around you. The final third I’ll scatter to the wind as I unsheathe my sword to pursue them.

¹ Israel to be DestroyedI saw the Lord standing beside the altar as he was saying, “Strike the doorposts so that the thresholds tremble, bringing them down on the heads of all of them. Those who survive I will kill with the sword. Those who flee will not escape. There will be no deliverance for the fugitives. ² “Even if they burrow into Sheol, from there my hand will find them. Even if they ascend to the heavens, from there I will bring them down. ³ Even if they hide at the top of Mount Carmel, from there I will search and seize them. Even if they hide from my sight in the depths of the sea, from there I will order the serpent to strike them. ⁴ Even if they go into exile among their enemies, from there I will order the sword to kill them. I will fix my gaze on them to inflict disaster, and not to do good.

⁴ “The earth dries up and withers; the world languishes and fades away; heaven fades away, along with the earth. ⁵ The earth lies defiled beneath its inhabitants; because they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant. ⁶ Therefore the curse keeps on consuming, and its inhabitants are declared guilty. Furthermore, the inhabitants of earth are ablaze, and few people are left.

⁹ A Rebuke for Complacent Women“As for you ladies of leisure— Get up and listen to my voice! You daughters who feel so complacent— hear what I have to say! ¹⁰ In little more than a year, you complacent women will shudder; for the grape harvest will fail, and the fruit harvest will not come. ¹¹ So tremble, you ladies of leisure! Shudder, you daughters who feel so complacent! Strip down and make yourselves naked down to the waist! Then wrap yourself in sackcloth and beat your breasts. ¹² For people will be beating their breasts in mourning over the pleasant fields, over the fruitful vines, ¹³ and over the land of my people overgrown with thorns and briers— yes, over all the houses of merriment and over this city of revelry. ¹⁴ “For the palace will be abandoned, the noisy city deserted; the citadel and watchtower will become barren wastes forever, the delight of wild donkeys, and a pasture for flocks,

²² The sound of a report, it’s coming now! There is a great commotion from a land in the north to make the towns of Judah desolate, a refuge for jackals.”

² “Judah mourns, and her gates languish. The people mourn for the land, and the cry of Jerusalem goes up.

¹⁰ “This is what the LORD says: ‘You are saying about this place, “It is a ruin without people and without animals.” Yet in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem which are desolate places without inhabitants and without animals, there will again be heard ¹¹ the sounds of rejoicing and gladness, the sounds of the bridegroom and the bride, and the sounds of those saying, “Give thanks to the LORD of the Heavenly Armies, for the LORD is good, and his gracious love lasts forever,”
as they bring thanksgiving offerings to the LORD’s Temple. For I’ll restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first,’ declares the LORD.
¹² “This is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies says: ‘In this place that is now a ruin without people or animals, and in all its towns there will again be pasture for shepherds resting their flocks.

¹¹ All her people groaned as they searched for food. They traded their valuables in order to eat, to keep themselves alive. Look, LORD, and see how I have become dishonored. ¹² May it not befall you, all who pass along the road! Look and see: Is there any grief like my grief dealt out to me, by which the LORD afflicted me in the time of his fierce wrath?

¹⁸ The LORD is in the right, but I rebelled against his commands. Listen, please, all you people, and look at my pain— my young men and women have gone into captivity. ¹⁹ I called out to my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders have died within the city while looking for something to eat to keep themselves alive. ²⁰ Look, LORD, how distressed I am; all my insides are churning. My heart is troubled within me, because I vigorously rebelled. Outside the sword brings loss of life, while at home death rules.

⁶ He plowed under his Temple like a garden, spoiling his tent. The LORD abolished in Zion both festivals and Sabbaths. In his fierce wrath he despised both king and priest. ⁷ The Lord rejected his altar, disavowing his sanctuary. He gave up her palace walls to the control of the enemy. They shouted in the LORD’s Temple, as though they were attending a day of celebration.

⁹ Jerusalem’s gates collapsed to the ground; he destroyed and broke the bars of her gates. Both king and prince have gone into captivity. There is no instruction, and the prophets receive no vision from the LORD. ¹⁰ The leaders of cherished Zion sit silently on the ground; they throw dust on their heads and dress in mourning clothes. The young women of Jerusalem bow their heads in sorrow. ¹¹ My eyes are worn out from crying, my insides are churning, My emotions pour out in grief because my people are destroyed— Children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

¹⁹ Get up and cry aloud in the night, at the beginning of every hour. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord! Lift up your hands toward him for the lives of your children, who are fainting away at every street corner. ²⁰ Look, LORD, and take note: To whom have you done this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cuddled? Should priests and prophets be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? ²¹ Young men and the aged lie on the ground in the streets; my young women and young men have fallen by the sword. You killed them in your anger, slaughtering them without pity.

¹³ Our young men must grind grain with a millstone; our youths stumble under the weight of wood.

⁸ “Grieve like a virgin, who, dressed in her mourner’s clothes, cries out in memory of the man she was going to marry. ⁹ Both grain offering and wine offering have been removed from the LORD’s Temple; the priests and ministering servants of the LORD are mourning.”
¹⁰ The Coming Famine“The fields lie in ruins and the ground is dried up. Indeed, the grain is ruined, the new wine has evaporated, and the olive oil has run out. ¹¹ Be dismayed, you farmers! Cry aloud, you vintners, for the wheat and barley, because the harvest in your fields has been lost. ¹² The grapevine is shriveled and the fig tree is withered, along with the pomegranate tree, the palm tree, the apple tree and all of the cultivated trees. Truly, joy has evaporated from Adam’s children.”
¹³ A Call to Mourn and Repent“Put on your mourning clothes, you priests; and cry aloud, you ministering servants at the altar! Come! Stay the night in mourner’s clothes, you ministers of my God, because the grain offering and the wine offering is held back from the Temple of your God.

¹² “Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed up like a field, and Jerusalem will become heaps of rubble, and the Temple Mount like a forest high place.”

¹⁵ and if you refuse my statutes, loathe my ordinances, and fail to carry out all of my commands, thereby breaching my covenant, ¹⁶ then I will certainly do this to you: I’ll appoint sudden terror to infect you like tuberculosis and fever. Your eyes will fail and your life will waste away. You’ll plant in vain, because your enemies will consume what you plant. ¹⁷ I’ll set my face against you so that you’ll be defeated before your enemies. Those who hate you will have dominion over you and you’ll keep fleeing even when no one is pursuing you.
¹⁸ “If, despite all of this, you still don’t listen to me, then I’ll punish you seven times more on account of your sins. ¹⁹ I’ll break your mighty pride. I’ll make the heavens to be like iron and the ground like bronze. ²⁰ Your strength will be spent in vain, because your land won’t yield its produce and the trees of the land won’t yield their fruit.
²¹ “If you live life contrary to me and remain unwilling to listen to me, then I’ll add to your wounds seven times more on account of your sins. ²² I’ll send wild beasts against you from the open country to deprive you of your children, destroy your cattle, and decrease your number so that your roads become desolate.
²³ “If, despite these things, you still won’t return to me, but live life contrary to me, ²⁴ then I’ll certainly oppose you. I’ll take vengeance against you seven fold on account of your sins. ²⁵ I’ll bring the sword against you to execute the vengeance of my covenant. When you gather in your cities, I’ll send a pestilence. As a result, you’ll be delivered into the control of your enemies. ²⁶ When I destroy the source of your bread, ten women will bake bread in one oven. Then they’ll return back your bread by weight. You’ll eat but won’t be satisfied.
²⁷ “If, after all of this time, you don’t listen to me, but instead live life contrary to me, ²⁸ I’ll oppose you with vicious rage. Indeed, I myself will punish you seven fold on account of your sins. ²⁹ At that time, you’ll eat the flesh of your sons and you’ll eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰ I’ll destroy your high places and cut down your sun pillars. Then I’ll cast your dead bodies on top of the bodies of your idols. I’ll loathe you. ³¹ I’ll lay your cities to waste and destroy your sanctuaries so I don’t have to smell the scent of your soothing odors. ³² I’ll make the land so desolate that your enemies who live in it will be astonished.”
³³ Captivity among the Nations“I’ll scatter you among the nations and draw the sword after you so that your land becomes desolate and your towns become ruins. ³⁴ Then the land will finally be pleased with its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time, the land will rest and take its Sabbaths. ³⁵ As long as it lies desolate, it will have rest that it will not have had during your Sabbaths when you were living in it.
³⁶ “As for the remnants among you, I’ll bring despair in their hearts in the land of their enemies so that even the sound of a blown leaf will chase them and they flee as though pursued by the sword and fall when no one is pursuing. ³⁷ They’ll stumble over each other as though fleeing before the sword, even though no one is pursuing.
“You won’t have power to resist your enemies. ³⁸ You’ll perish among the nations and the land of your enemies will consume you. ³⁹ The remnants among you will waste away in the land of your enemies due to their iniquity. Indeed, they’ll also waste away on account of the iniquities of their ancestors with them.”
⁴⁰ Return from Captivity“Nevertheless, when they confess their iniquity, the iniquity of their ancestors, and their unfaithfulness by which they acted unfaithfully against me by living life contrary to me— ⁴¹ causing me to oppose them and take them to the land of their enemies so that the uncircumcised foreskin of their hearts can be humbled and so that they accept the punishment of their iniquity— ⁴² then I’ll remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham. I’ll also remember the land. ⁴³ They will leave the land so it can rest while it lies desolate without them. That’s when they’ll receive the punishment of their iniquity, because indeed they will have rejected my ordinances and despised my statutes. ⁴⁴ Yet, despite all of these things, when they’re in the land of their enemies, I won’t reject or despise them so as to completely destroy them and by doing so violate my covenant with them, because I am the LORD their God. ⁴⁵ Instead, on account of them, I’ll remember my covenant with their ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt right before the eyes of the nations, so that I could be their God. I am the LORD.”
⁴⁶ These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws that the LORD made between himself and the Israelis on Mount Sinai, as recorded by the hand of Moses.

²⁵ Warnings against Angering God“After you’ve borne children and grandchildren, have been there for a long time in the land, have become so corrupted that you make images of any form, and have done evil in the eyes of the LORD your God, you will provoke him to anger. ²⁶ Heaven and earth will testify against what has occurred today: you’ll surely and swiftly be destroyed from the land that you are about to possess by crossing the Jordan River. You won’t live long in it, because you’ll certainly be exterminated. ²⁷ Moreover, the LORD will scatter you among the nations, and you’ll be fewer in number in the nations where the LORD your God will drive you.

¹⁵ Reversal of Blessings“But if you don’t obey the LORD your God and faithfully carry out all his commands and statutes that I’m giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you and overwhelm you.
¹⁶ “Cursed will you be in the city and cursed will you be in the country.
¹⁷ “Cursed will be your grain basket and your kneading bowl.
¹⁸ “Cursed will your children be, as well as the produce of your land, the offspring of your beasts and cattle, and the offspring of your flock.
¹⁹ “Cursed will you be in your comings and goings.”
²⁰ Diseases and Drought“The LORD will send the curse among you, will confuse you, and will rebuke you in everything you undertake until you are destroyed and perish quickly because of your evil deeds, since you will have forsaken him. ²¹ The LORD will cause you to be ill with long-lasting diseases until you are wiped out from the land that you are entering to possess. ²² The LORD will afflict you with tuberculosis, fever, inflammation, high fever, drought, blight, and mildew. These will attack you until you are completely destroyed. ²³ The sky above your head will become bronze while the ground beneath you will become iron. ²⁴ The LORD will change the rain on your land to powder and dust. It will come down from the sky until you are exterminated.”
²⁵ From Defeat to Exile“The LORD will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You’ll go out against them in one direction, but you’ll flee from them in seven directions. Consequently, you’ll be in a state of great terror throughout all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶ Your dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth, with no one to chase them away.
²⁷ “The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, skin disease, and festering rashes, and none of them will be curable. ²⁸ The LORD will afflict you with insanity, blindness, and mental confusion. ²⁹ As a result, you’ll wander aimlessly in broad daylight just as a blind person wanders in darkness. You won’t prosper in life. Instead you’ll be oppressed and plundered all day long, with no deliverer.
³⁰ You’ll be engaged to a woman, but another man will rape her. You’ll build a house but you won’t live in it. You’ll plant a vineyard but you won’t harvest it. ³¹ Your ox will be slaughtered in front of you, and you won’t be able to eat it. Your donkey will be stolen from you while you watch and won’t be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be handed to your enemies and there will be no deliverer. ³² Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you watch, and you won’t be able to approach them at all, and you’ll be powerless to help.
³³ “A people whom you don’t know will devour what your land and labor produces. You’ll be only oppressed and discouraged continuously ³⁴ until you are driven insane from what your eyes will see.
³⁵ “The LORD will inflict you with incurable boils on your knees and legs, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
³⁶ “The LORD will banish you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you’ll serve other gods of wood and stone. ³⁷ You’ll become a desolation and a proverb, and you’ll be mocked among the people where the LORD will drive you.”
³⁸ Complete Reversal“You’ll plant many seeds in a field, but your harvest will be small because the locust will consume it. ³⁹ You’ll plant a vineyard, but you won’t drink wine or harvest any grapes, because worms will consume it. ⁴⁰ You’ll have olive trees throughout your territory, but you won’t be able to anoint yourself with oil, because the olives will drop off the trees. ⁴¹ You’ll bear sons and daughters, but they won’t belong to you, because they’ll go into captivity. ⁴² Whirling locusts will consume every tree and the produce of your land. ⁴³ The foreigner in your midst will be elevated higher and higher over you, while you are brought low little by little. ⁴⁴ He will lend to you, but you won’t lend to him. He’ll be the head, but you’ll be the tail. ⁴⁵ All these curses will come upon you and will overwhelm you until you are exterminated, because you didn’t obey the LORD your God to keep his commands and statutes, which he had commanded you. ⁴⁶ These curses will serve as a sign and wonder for you and your descendants as long as you live.”
⁴⁷ Servitude and Bondage“Because you didn’t serve the LORD your God joyfully and wholeheartedly, despite the abundance of everything you have, ⁴⁸ you’ll serve your enemies whom the LORD your God will send against you. You will serve in famine and in drought, in nakedness, and in lack of everything. They’ll set a yoke of iron upon your neck until they have exterminated you.
⁴⁹ “The LORD will raise a distant nation against you from the other side of the earth. Swooping down like a vulture, ⁵⁰ it will be a nation whose language you don’t understand, whose stern appearance neither shows regard nor extends grace to anyone whether old or young. ⁵¹ Its army will consume the offspring of your animals and the produce of your soil until you are exterminated. They will leave you without your grain, wine, oil, the increase of your cattle, and the lamb of your flock, until you are completely destroyed. ⁵² They’ll besiege all your cities until your high and fortified walls in which you have trusted collapse throughout the land. Indeed, they will besiege all your cities, which the LORD your God gave you.”
⁵³ Cannibalism“You’ll eat your own children—the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God gave you—on account of the siege and the distress with which your enemy will oppress you. ⁵⁴ Even the compassionate man among you—the very sensitive one—will look with evil in his eyes toward his brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving sons, whom he spared. ⁵⁵ He will withhold from each of them the flesh of his sons that he is eating—since there will be nothing left—on account of the siege and distress with which your enemy will oppress you in all your cities. ⁵⁶ The most tender and sensitive lady among you, who doesn’t venture to touch the soles of her feet to the ground on account of her daintiness, will look with hostility in her eyes against her beloved husband, her sons, and her daughters. ⁵⁷ She will eat her afterbirth and her newborn children secretly—since there will be nothing left—on account of the siege and distress with which your enemy will oppress you in your cities.”
⁵⁸ Reduction in Population“If you aren’t careful to observe all the words of this Law that have been written in this book, instructing you to fear this glorious and awesome name of the LORD your God, ⁵⁹ then he will inflict extraordinary plagues on you and your children, great and lasting plagues, and severe and lasting illnesses. ⁶⁰ He will inflict on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they won’t be curable. ⁶¹ Moreover, the LORD will inflict you with illnesses and plagues that were not written in this Book of the Law, until you are exterminated. ⁶² Because you will not have obeyed the LORD your God, very few of you will be left—instead of you being as numerous as the stars in the heavens. ⁶³ Just as the LORD delighted to prosper and increase you, so now the LORD will delight to destroy, exterminate, and banish you from the land that you are about to enter to possess.”
⁶⁴ Scattering among the Nations“He’ll scatter you among the peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you’ll serve other gods made of wood and stones, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. ⁶⁵ Among those nations you’ll have no rest. There’ll be no resting place for the soles of your feet. Instead, the LORD will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a despairing spirit. ⁶⁶ You’ll cling to life, being fearful by both night and day, with no assurance of survival. ⁶⁷ In the morning you’ll say, ‘I wish it were evening.’ Yet in the evening you’ll say, “I wish it were morning,” on account of what you’ll dread and what you’ll see. ⁶⁸ Finally, the LORD will bring you back to Egypt by ship, a place that I said you’ll never see again. There you’ll try to sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”

¹⁸ Be alert so there is no man, woman, family, or a tribe whose heart is turning away from the LORD your God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Be alert so there will be no root among you that produces poisonous and bitter fruit, ¹⁹ because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he will bless himself and say: ‘I will have a peaceful life, even though I’m determined to be stubborn.’ By doing this he will be sweeping away both watered and parched ground alike.’
²⁰ “The LORD won’t forgive such a person. Instead, the zealous anger of the LORD will blaze against him. All the curses that were written in this book will fall on him. Then the LORD will wipe out his memory from under heaven. ²¹ The LORD will set him apart from all the tribes of Israel for destruction, according to the curses of the covenant that were written in this Book of the Law.”
²² A Reminder of Sodom and Gomorrah“Then the generation to come—your descendants after you and the foreigners who come from afar—will see plagues and illnesses infecting the land that the LORD will inflict on it. ²³ The whole land will be covered with salt pits and burning sulfur, with nothing planted, nothing sprouting, and producing no vegetation—overthrown like Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, when the LORD overthrew them in his raging fury. ²⁴ All the nations will ask, ‘Why did the LORD do this to this land? What is the meaning of this fierce and great anger?’ ²⁵ Then they will answer themselves, ‘Because they’ve abandoned the covenant of their LORD, the God of their ancestors that he had made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. ²⁶ They followed and worshipped other gods whom they had not known and whom he did not assign to them. ²⁷ For this reason, the anger of the LORD raged against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that were written in this book. ²⁸ The LORD uprooted them from the land in his anger, wrath, and great fury, deporting them to another land, and that’s the way things are today.’

¹⁶ Then the LORD told Moses, “Look! You are about to join your ancestors. Afterwards, this people will rebel and commit prostitution with the foreign gods of the land that they are about to enter to possess. They will abandon me and break my covenant that I made with them. ¹⁷ When that happens, my anger will burn against them, because they will have abandoned me. I’ll hide my face from them, they will be consumed, and many evils and distresses will find them. When this happens, they will say, ‘These troubles have happened to us because God isn’t among us.’ ¹⁸ I’ll surely hide my face in that day on account of the evil that they will have done for they turned to other gods.”

²⁹ because I know that after my death, you’ll surely act wickedly and turn from the road that I’ve instructed you. As a result, evil will fall on you in days to come, because you’ll act wickedly in the sight of the LORD, causing him to become angry due to your behavior.”

¹⁵ Israel’s RebellionJacob dined until satisfied; Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. He grew fat, coarse, and gross, so that he abandoned the God who made him and spurned the Rock that was his salvation. ¹⁶ They provoked him to jealousy over foreigners and to anger over detestable things. ¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons— not to the real God— gods whom they didn’t know, new neighbors who had recently appeared, whom your ancestors never feared. ¹⁸ You neglected the Rock that fathered you; you abandoned God, who was awaiting your birth.
¹⁹ The LORD’s ResponseThe LORD saw it and became jealous, provoked by his sons and daughters. ²⁰ So he said: “Let me hide my face from them. I will observe what their end will be, because they are a perverted generation, children within whom there is no loyalty. ²¹ They provoked me to jealousy over non-gods, and to be angry over their vanity. Now I’ll provoke them to jealousy over a non-people; and over a foolish nation I’ll provoke them to anger. ²² For a fire breaks out in my anger— burning to the deepest part of the afterlife, consuming the earth and its produce and igniting the foundations of the mountains. ²³ I’ll bury them in misfortunes and bring them to an end with my arrows. ²⁴ Emaciated from famine, feverish from plague, and destroyed by bitterness, I’ll send fanged beasts against them, along with poisonous snakes that glide through the dust. ²⁵ Outside, the sword will cause bereavement; within, there will be terror for the young man and virgin alike, also for the nursing infant and the aged man.” ²⁶ “I said, ‘I will scatter them, erasing their memory from the human race, ²⁷ if it weren’t for dreading the taunting of their enemies— otherwise, their adversary might misinterpret and say, “Our power is great. It isn’t the LORD who made all of this happen.”’”

¹⁴ Nebuchadnezzar’s Third Capture of Jerusalem
Meanwhile, all the officials who supervised the priests and the people remained unfaithful, following the detestable example of the surrounding nations. They polluted the LORD’s Temple that he had consecrated in Jerusalem. ¹⁵ The LORD God of their ancestors pleaded with them time and again through his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on the place of his residence, ¹⁶ but they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until there was no remedy for the wrath of the LORD that arose to punish his people.

³³ You are righteous in all that is happening to us, because you have acted faithfully while we have practiced evil. ³⁴ Furthermore, neither our kings, nor our leaders, nor our priests nor our ancestors have practiced your Law or paid attention to your commands and warnings by which you admonished them.

⁶ You have set us at strife against our neighbors and our enemies deride us.

⁴² You have exalted the right hand of his adversaries; you have caused all of his enemies to rejoice.

⁷ Indeed, we are consumed by your anger and terrified by your wrath. ⁸ You have set our iniquities before you, what we have concealed in the light of your presence.

¹⁸ Your holy people took possession for a little while, but now our enemies have trampled down your sanctuary.

³ The Prophet SpeaksLORD, don’t your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they didn’t flinch. You brought them to an end, but they refused to receive discipline. They made their faces harder than stone, and they refused to repent. ⁴ Then I said, “These are only the poor, they’re foolish, for they don’t know the LORD’s way, the requirement of their God. ⁵ Let me go to the leaders and speak to them. For they know the LORD’s way, the requirement of their God.”
The LORD Answers “But they, all together, have broken the yoke and torn off the restraints. ⁶ Therefore a lion from the forest will attack them, a wolf from the desert will devastate them. A leopard is watching their towns, and everyone who goes out of them will be torn to pieces. For their transgressions are many, and their apostasies numerous. ⁷ Why should I forgive you? Your sons have forsaken me, and you have sworn by those who aren’t gods. When I gave them enough food to satisfy them, they committed adultery and marched to the prostitute’s house. ⁸ They were well-fed, lusty stallions, each one neighing after his neighbor’s wife. ⁹ “Should I not punish them for these things?” asks the LORD, “And on a nation like this, should I not seek retribution?”

²⁹ ‘Should I not punish them for this?’ asks the LORD. ‘Should I not avenge myself on a nation like this?’

⁷ I’ll forsake my house, I’ll abandon my inheritance. I’ll give the beloved of my heart into the hand of her enemies.

¹⁴ Among the prophets of Jerusalem I saw a horrible thing, for they commit adultery and live a lie. They strengthen the hands of those who do evil, so that no one repents of his evil. All of them are like Sodom to me, and her residents like Gomorrah.”

¹⁴ All your lovers have forgotten you; they don’t seek you. Indeed, I’ve struck you down with the blow of an enemy, with the punishment of a cruel foe because your wickedness is great, and your sins are numerous. ¹⁵ Why do you cry out because of your injury? Your wound won’t heal. Because your wickedness is severe, and your sins are numerous, I’ve done all these things to you.

²¹ “As for the sacrifices that you, your ancestors, your kings, your officials, and the people of the land offered in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, the LORD remembered them, did he not? And they came to his attention, did they not? ²² The LORD could no longer bear it because of your evil deeds and the repulsive things that you did. So your land has become a ruin and an object of horror and ridicule without an inhabitant, as is the case today.

¹⁸ The LORD is in the right, but I rebelled against his commands. Listen, please, all you people, and look at my pain— my young men and women have gone into captivity.

¹⁷ The LORD did what he planned. He carried out his threat. Just as he commanded long ago, he has torn down without pity; He let the enemy boast about you and has exalted the power of your enemies.

³⁹ Why should anyone living complain, any mortal, about being punished for sin? ⁴⁰ Let us examine our lifestyles, putting them to the test, and turn back to the LORD. ⁴¹ Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven. ⁴² As for us, we have sinned and rebelled; but you have not pardoned us. ⁴³ Clothing yourself with anger, you pursued us. You killed without pity,

⁴⁶ All our enemies jeer at us with gaping mouths.

¹⁷ “Do you see this, Son of Man?” he asked me. “Is it an insignificant thing for Judah’s house to commit the detestable things that they’re doing here? They’ve filled the land with violence and turned away from me, causing me to become angry again. Look how they’re sniffing with their noses! ¹⁸ I’m going to deal with them in rage and anger. I’ll show neither pity nor compassion. They’ll cry loudly directly in my ears, but I won’t listen to them.”

⁹ “The house of Israel and Judah is guilty—and theirs is a stubborn guilt, at that!” he replied to me. “The land is filled with blood, and the city overflows with injustice, because they keep saying, ‘The LORD has abandoned the land,’ and ‘The LORD isn’t watching.’

²⁴ “Son of Man, tell her, ‘You’re a land that hasn’t been purified, one that hasn’t been rained on in the day of indignation. ²⁵ There’s a conspiracy of prophets within her, and like a roaring lion tearing its prey, they’ve devoured people, and confiscated treasures, and taken precious things. They’ve added to the population of widows within her. ²⁶ Her priests have violated my Law and profaned my sacred things. They didn’t differentiate between what’s sacred and what’s common. They didn’t instruct others to discern clean from unclean things. They refused to keep my Sabbaths.
“‘I’m constantly being profaned among them. ²⁷ Her princes within her are like wolves tearing their prey apart. They shed blood, destroying souls, and make unjust gain.
²⁸ “‘Her prophets whitewashed all of these things through false visions and lying divinations. They kept on saying, “This is what the Lord GOD says…”, when the LORD has not spoken. ²⁹ The people of the land were vigorously oppressive and took possession of plunder by violence. They’ve afflicted the poor and the needy and unjustly treated the foreigner. ³⁰ I sought for a man among them to build the wall and stand in the breach in my presence on behalf of the land so that it won’t be destroyed, but I found no one, ³¹ so I poured my indignation over them. With my fierce anger, I’ve consumed them. I brought the consequences of their behavior upon them,’ declares the Lord GOD.”

⁷ ‘To you, Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us, open humiliation—even to this day, to the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, both those who are nearby and those who are far away in all the lands to which you drove them because of their unfaithful acts that they committed against you. ⁸ ‘Open humiliation belongs to us, LORD, to our kings, our officials, and our ancestors, because we’ve sinned against you. ⁹ But to the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we’ve rebelled against him ¹⁰ and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by walking in his laws that he gave us through his servants the prophets. ¹¹ And all Israel flouted your Law, turning aside from it and not obeying your voice. Because we’ve sinned against him, the curse has been poured upon us, along with the oath written in the Law of Moses the servant of God. ¹² ‘He has confirmed his accusation that he spoke against us and against our rulers who governed us by bringing upon us great calamity, because nowhere in the universe has anything been done like what has been done to Jerusalem. ¹³ As it’s written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has befallen us, but we still haven’t sought the LORD our God by turning from our lawlessness to pay attention to your truth. ¹⁴ So the LORD watched for the right time to bring the calamity upon us, because the LORD our God is righteous regarding everything he does, but we have not obeyed his voice. ¹⁵ ‘And now, Lord our God, who brought your people from the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and who made a name for yourself that remains to this day—we’ve sinned. We’ve acted wickedly. ¹⁶ Lord, in view of all your righteous acts, please turn your anger and wrath away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. Because of our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors, Jerusalem and your people have become an embarrassment to all of those around us.

⁹ Please listen to this, you leaders of the house of Jacob, you officials of the house of Israel, you who hate administering justice, who pervert the very meaning of equity, ¹⁰ who are building up Zion by means of bloodshed, and Jerusalem by means of iniquity. ¹¹ Her leaders judge for the money, her priests teach only when they’re paid, and her prophets prophesy for cash. Even so, don’t they all rely on the LORD as they ask, ‘The LORD is among us, is he not? Nothing bad can possibly happen to us!’ ¹² “Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed up like a field, and Jerusalem will become heaps of rubble, and the Temple Mount like a forest high place.”

⁸ Don’t be glad on my account, my enemy. When I fall, I’ll get up. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD is a light for me. ⁹ I will endure the LORD’s anger— since I have sinned against him— until he takes over my defense, administers justice on my behalf, and brings me out to the light, where I will gaze on his righteousness. ¹⁰ Then my enemy will observe it, and shame will engulf the ones who asked me, ‘Where is the LORD your God?’ My own eyes will see them, they will be trampled on like mud in the streets.

¹ The LORD’s Rebuke to Jerusalem Woe to this filthy, polluted, and oppressive city! ² It won’t obey anyone. It won’t accept discipline. It does not trust in the LORD. It does not approach God. ³ Its national officials are roaring lions; its judges are like wolves of the night that don’t leave the bones for the morning. ⁴ Its prophets are arrogant and treacherous. Its priests have contaminated the sanctuary. They give perverse interpretations of the Law. ⁵ The righteous LORD who lives within her will do no wrong; he will bring justice to light morning by morning. He never fails, but the unjust are shameless.
The Integrity of God’s Justice ⁶ “I have destroyed nations— their fortifications are deserted. I have turned their main thoroughfares into wastelands where no one will travel. Their cities are desolate; as a result, not one man remains— no, not even a single resident. ⁷ I have said, ‘If only you would fear me, if only you would take my instructions to heart.’ Then their houses would not have been torn down. I have chastened them, but they were eager to corrupt everything they were doing.”
The Future Deliverance of Israel ⁸ “Just you wait!” declares the LORD. “The day will come when I stand up as a prosecutor, for I am determined to assemble the nations and to gather the kingdoms, in order to pour out my indignation upon them— all of my fierce anger. All the earth will be consumed by the fire of my jealousy.

³⁶ “As for the remnants among you, I’ll bring despair in their hearts in the land of their enemies so that even the sound of a blown leaf will chase them and they flee as though pursued by the sword and fall when no one is pursuing. ³⁷ They’ll stumble over each other as though fleeing before the sword, even though no one is pursuing.
“You won’t have power to resist your enemies.

²⁵ From Defeat to Exile“The LORD will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You’ll go out against them in one direction, but you’ll flee from them in seven directions. Consequently, you’ll be in a state of great terror throughout all the kingdoms of the earth.

³⁰ How can one person chase a thousand of them and two put a myriad to flight, unless their Rock delivers them and the LORD gives them up?

¹² The Israelis have been unable to stand before their enemies. They’re turning their backs and running from their enemies because they themselves have been turned over to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy these things that have been turned over to destruction. ¹³ So get up and sanctify the people. Tell them, ‘Sanctify yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, because this is what the LORD God of Israel, says: “There are things turned over to destruction among you, Israel. You won’t be able to defeat your enemies until you remove what has been turned over to destruction.

¹¹ How much worse will it be, then, when evil men kill an innocent man on his own bed in his own house! Shouldn’t I avenge his blood—which you are responsible for shedding—by removing you from the earth?” ¹² So David commanded his personal guards, and they killed Rechab and Baanah, cut off their hands and feet, and hung up their bodies beside the pool at Hebron. They took Ish-bosheth’s head and buried it in Abner’s tomb at Hebron.

²¹ “This is what the LORD has spoken against him: ‘She despises and mocks you, this virgin daughter of Zion! Behind your back she shakes her head, this daughter of Jerusalem!

⁹ However, you cast us off and made us ashamed! You did not even march with our armies! ¹⁰ You made us retreat from our oppressors. Our enemies ransacked us. ¹¹ You handed us over to be slaughtered like sheep and you scattered us among the nations.

² Beautifully situated, the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion towards the north, the city of the great King. ³ Within her citadels God is known as a place of refuge.

² From Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shined forth.

⁹ Worship the LORD in holy splendor; tremble before him, all the earth.

¹² If your sons keep my covenant and my statutes that I will teach them, then their sons will also sit on your throne forever.” ¹³ For the LORD has chosen Zion, desiring it as his dwelling place.

²¹ Diagnosis and Judgment“How the faithful city has become a whore, she who used to be filled with justice! Righteousness used to reside within her, but now only murderers live there.

⁵ Then the LORD will create over the entire site of Mount Zion—including over those who assemble there—a cloud by day

⁶ Shout aloud, and sing for joy, you who live in Zion, because great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

¹⁸ Say to the king and the queen mother, “Come take a lowly seat, because your beautiful crowns have fallen off your heads.”

⁵ Even the doe in the field gives birth and then abandons her young because there is no grass. ⁶ Wild donkeys stand on the barren hills. They pant for air like jackals. Their eyesight fails because there is no vegetation.”

⁴ “This is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles who were taken from Jerusalem into exile to Babylon,

³ At the sound of the galloping hooves of his horses, at the rumbling of his chariots, the clatter of his wheels, fathers won’t turn back for their children because their hands are weak,

⁴¹ The towns will be captured and the strongholds seized. On that day the hearts of the warriors of Moab will be like the heart of a woman in labor.

³⁰ The warriors of Babylon have stopped fighting. They stay in their strongholds; their strength is dried up; they have become like women. Her buildings are set on fire; the bars of her gates are broken. ³¹ One runner runs to meet another runner, and one messenger to meet another messenger, to tell the king of Babylon that his city has been seized from one end to the other. ³² The fords have been captured, and the marshes burned with fire. The soldiers are terrified.

⁷ The wall of the city was broken through, and all the soldiers fled, leaving the city at night through the gate between the two walls next to the king’s garden, even though the Chaldeans were all around the city. They went in the direction of the Arabah.
⁸ The Chaldean army went after the king, overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, and all his troops were scattered from him.

¹¹ He blinded Zedekiah and bound him in bronze shackles. Then the king of Babylon took him to Babylon and put him in prison until he died.

¹³ He burned the LORD’s Temple, the king’s house, and all the houses in Jerusalem. He also burned every public building with fire.

¹ The Condition of Israel How the Lord in his wrath shamed cherished Zion! He cast down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, He did not remember his footstool in the time of his anger. ² The Lord swallowed up without pity all of Jacob’s habitations. In his wrath he tore down the strongholds of fair Judah. He cast to the ground in dishonor both her kingdom and its rulers. ³ In his fierce wrath he cut off all the strength of Israel. He withdrew his protection as the enemy approached. He burned Jacob like a blazing fire consumes everything around it. ⁴ He bent his bow against us as would an enemy, his right hand cocked as would an adversary. He has killed everyone in whom we took pride; in the tent of cherished Zion he poured out his anger like fire. ⁵ The Lord has become like an enemy— he has devoured Israel. He has devoured all of her palaces, destroying her fortresses. He filled cherished Judah with mourning and lament.

²⁰ The Temple Defiled“As for his beautiful ornament, he set it up in majesty, but they made detestable images and loathsome idols. Therefore, I’ll give them something loathsome— ²¹ I’ll give it as plunder into the control of strangers and as the spoils of war to the wicked who will invade the land to profane it. ²² I’ll turn my face away from them so that they’ll defile my treasured place. Robbers will enter and profane it!

²² The Cherubim LeaveThen the cherubim arose, with their wheels alongside, and the glory of Israel’s God remained above and over them. ²³ The glory of the LORD went up from the middle of the city and stood on the mountain, east of the city.

²¹ ‘Tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord GOD says: “Look! I’m about to profane my sanctuary, the source of your proud strength, the desire of your eyes, and the object of your affection. Your sons and daughters, whom you’ve left behind, will die by the sword.

²⁵ “And now, Son of Man, on the day that I take their strength, joy, and glory from them, those whom they love to watch, the focus of their affection—their sons and daughters—

¹⁴ “Sing aloud, daughter of Zion! Shout out, Israel! Rejoice with all of your heart, daughter of Jerusalem! ¹⁵ The LORD has acquitted you; turning back your adversaries. Israel’s king, the LORD, is among you; you will not fear disaster anymore. ¹⁶ “When all of this happens, it will be told Jerusalem, ‘Don’t be afraid!” and to Zion, ‘Don’t lose courage!” ¹⁷ The LORD your God among you is powerful— he will save and he will take joyful delight in you. In his love he will renew you with his love; he will celebrate with singing because of you.

⁷ For what great nation has a god so near like the LORD our God whenever we call on him? ⁸ And what great nation has all the decrees and righteous ordinances like all this teaching that I’m giving you today?

³⁴ Or has any god ever taken for himself one nation out from another nation with testings, signs, wonders, wars, awesome power, and magnificent, terrifying deeds as the LORD your God did in Egypt before your eyes?
³⁵ “You have been shown this in order to know that ‘the LORD is God’ and there is no one like him. ³⁶ You have been made to hear his voice from heaven so you may be instructed. And he showed you his great fire here on earth, and you heard his voice from the middle of that fire. ³⁷ Moreover, he loved your ancestors, chose their descendants after them, and brought you out of Egypt, accompanied by his presence and great power,

⁷ because the LORD your God is bringing you to a good land—a land with rivers and deep springs flowing to the valleys and hills. ⁸ It’s a land filled with wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates. It’s a land filled with olive oil and honey— ⁹ a land without scarcity. You’ll eat food in it and lack nothing. It’s a land where its rocks are iron and you can dig copper from its mountains.”

² “I wish I could go back to how things were a few months ago; when God used to watch over me,

⁴ These things I will recall as I pour out my troubles within me: I used to go with the crowd in a procession to the house of God, accompanied with shouts of joy and thanksgiving.

³ I remember God, and I groan; I meditate, while my spirit grows faint. Interlude

⁵ I thought of ancient times, considering years long past. ⁶ During the night I remembered my song. I meditate in my heart, and my spirit ponders. ⁷ Will the Lord reject me forever and not show favor again? ⁸ Has his gracious love ceased forever? Will his promise be unfulfilled in future generations? ⁹ Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger withheld his compassion? Interlude

⁴ We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a mockery and a derision to those around us.

³ for it was there that our captors asked us for songs and our torturers demanded joy from us, “Sing us one of the songs about Zion!” ⁴ How are we to sing the song of the LORD on foreign soil?

¹⁹ He declares his words to Jacob, his statutes and decrees to Israel. ²⁰ He has not dealt with any other nation like this; they never knew his decrees. Hallelujah!

¹ The LORD’s Vineyard I will sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: “The one I love had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. ² He plowed its land and cleared it of stones. Then he planted it with the choicest vines, built a watchtower in the middle of it, and dug a wine vat in it; He expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only wild ones.” ³ “So now, you inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, won’t you please, between me and my vineyard. ⁴ What more could I do in my vineyard, that I haven’t already done? When I expected it to produce good grapes, why did it yield wild ones?

⁷ “This is what the LORD God of Israel says: ‘This is what you are to say to the king of Judah who sent you to me to inquire of me, “Look, Pharaoh’s army that has come to help will go back to its own land of Egypt,

¹⁵ Everyone who passes by on the road shake their fists at you. They hiss and shake their heads at cherished Jerusalem: “Is this the city men used to call ‘The Perfection of Beauty,’ and ‘The Joy of the Entire Earth’”? ¹⁶ All of your enemies insult you with gaping mouths. They hiss and grind their teeth while saying, “We have devoured her completely. Yes, this is the day that we anticipated! We found it at last; we have seen it!”

¹⁷ Our eyes failed, searching in vain for hope; we kept watching and looking for a nation that would not help.

¹¹ The Nations Despise Zion“Now many nations have gathered against you, saying, ‘Let her be defiled,’ and ‘Let’s look down on Zion.’

¹⁷ “Then he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more food than they can eat, and here I am starving to death!

²⁵ “But Abraham said, ‘My child, remember that during your lifetime you received blessings, while Lazarus received hardships. But now he is being comforted here, while you suffer.

³⁰ “Therefore, the LORD God of Israel has declared, ‘I did, in fact, say that your family and your ancestor’s family would walk before me forever,’ but now the LORD declares, ‘Far be it from me! The one who honors me I’ll honor, and the one who despises me is to be treated with contempt.

⁴⁶ “When they sin against you—because there isn’t a single human being who doesn’t sin—and you become angry with them and deliver them over to their enemy, who takes them away captive to the land that belongs to their enemy, whether near or far away, ⁴⁷ if they turn their hearts back to you in the land where they have been taken captive, repent, and pray to you—even if they do so in the land of their captivity—confessing, ‘We have sinned, we have committed abominations, and practiced wickedness,’

⁷ then I will eliminate Israel from the land that I gave them and from the Temple that I’ve consecrated for my name. I will throw them out of my sight, and Israel will become the butt of jokes and a means of ridicule among people worldwide!

⁹ They will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and served them. That’s why the Lord has brought all of this disaster on them.’”

³ Your nakedness will be exposed, and your disgrace will also be seen. I’ll take vengeance, and I will spare no mortal.

² Instead, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have concealed his face from you so that he won’t listen. ³ For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your tongue mutters wickedness. ⁴ No one brings a lawsuit fairly, and no one goes to law honestly; they have relied on empty arguments and they tell lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to iniquity. ⁵ They hatch adders’ eggs and weave a spider’s web; whoever eats their eggs dies, and any crushed egg hatches out futility. ⁶ Their cobwebs cannot become clothing, they cannot cover themselves with what they make. Their deeds are deeds of iniquity, and acts of violence fill their hands. ⁷ Their feet rush to evil, and they are quick to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; ruin, destruction, and violence are in their paths. ⁸ The pathway of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their courses. They have made their roads crooked; no one who walks in them will know peace.”
⁹ A Commitment to Wait on God“So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We wait for light, but look—there is darkness; we wait for brightness, but we walk in deep darkness. ¹⁰ Let’s grope along the wall like the blind; let us grope like those who have no eyes. We stumble at midday as if it were twilight, in desolate places like dead people. ¹¹ We all growl like bears; we sigh mournfully like doves. We look for justice, but there is none, and for deliverance, but it’s far from us. ¹² “For our transgressions before you are many, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we acknowledge them: ¹³ they’ve rebelled in treachery against the LORD, and are turning away from following our God; and they’ve spoken oppression and revolt, and are conceiving lying words from the heart.

³¹ I heard a cry like that of a woman in labor, anguish like one giving birth to her firstborn, the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for air, stretching out her hand: “Woe is me! I’m about to faint in front of killers!”

²⁸ All of them are very rebellious, going around as slanderers. They’re bronze and iron, and all of them are corrupt.

²² When you say to yourselves, ‘Why have all these things happened to me?’ It’s because of the extent of your iniquity that your skirt has been lifted up, and your heels have suffered violence.

²⁶ I’ll also pull your skirt up over your face, so your shame will be seen,

⁴ I’ll make them a horrifying sight to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.

¹⁷ “Therefore, this is what the LORD says: ‘You haven’t obeyed me by each of you proclaiming a release for your brothers and neighbors. Now I’m going to proclaim a release for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘a release to the sword, to plague, and to famine, and I’ll make you a horrifying sight to all the kingdoms of the earth.

⁴ The roads that lead to Zion are in mourning, because no one travels to the festivals. All her gates are desolate; her priests are moaning. Her young women are grieving, and she is bitter. ⁵ Her adversaries dominate her, her enemies prosper. For the LORD has made her suffer because of her many transgressions. Her children have gone away, taken into captivity in the presence of the enemy.

¹¹ All her people groaned as they searched for food. They traded their valuables in order to eat, to keep themselves alive. Look, LORD, and see how I have become dishonored.

²⁰ Look, LORD, how distressed I am; all my insides are churning. My heart is troubled within me, because I vigorously rebelled. Outside the sword brings loss of life, while at home death rules. ²¹ People heard how I groan, with no one to comfort me. All my adversaries have heard about my troubles; they rejoice that you have caused them. Bring on the day you have promised, so my adversaries will become like me. ²² May all of their wickedness come to your attention, and deal with them as you have done with me because of all my transgressions. For I am constantly groaning, and my heart is faint.

¹⁵ “Go away! Unclean!” they shouted at them. “Go away! Go away! Don’t touch!” When they fled away and wandered, those among the nations decreed, “They cannot live here!” ¹⁶ The LORD himself separated them; he will do nothing more for them. They did not respect their own priests; they did not honor their elders.

²¹ Celebrate and rejoice, you women of Edom, who live in the land of Uz. But to you the cup also will pass— you will become drunk and stripped naked.

¹² Princes they have hung by their hands; elders they have disrespected. ¹³ Our young men must grind grain with a millstone; our youths stumble under the weight of wood. ¹⁴ Our elders have ceased ruling at the gate; our young men have abandoned their music. ¹⁵ The joy of our hearts has ceased, and our dancing has turned into dirges. ¹⁶ The crown has fallen from our head— woe to us, because we have sinned!

¹³ “Son of Man, when a nation sins against me by a treacherous act, I’ll reach out to oppose it, destroying its source of food, by sending famine against it, and by destroying both people and beast within it. ¹⁴ Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job lived in that land, they would only save their own lives on account of their righteousness,” declares the Lord GOD.
¹⁵ “If I were to make wild animals pass throughout the land, so that they kill its residents and it were to become desolate because no one will travel through it due to those wild animals, ¹⁶ then even though these three men were in it, as I live,” says the Lord GOD, “they wouldn’t be able to deliver even their sons or daughters. They would only save themselves, but the land would become desolate.
¹⁷ “Or if I were to bring war to that land and say, ‘Hey, sword! Pass throughout the land so I can destroy both man and beasts in it,’ ¹⁸ though these three men lived there, as I live,” declares the Lord GOD, “they couldn’t deliver their own sons and daughters. They would only save themselves.
¹⁹ “Or if I were to send a pestilence against that land and pour out my anger in it with bloodshed, destroying both man and beast in it, ²⁰ even though Noah, Daniel, and Job were among them, as I live” says the Lord GOD, “they couldn’t save their own sons or daughters. They would only save their own souls due to their own righteousness.”
²¹ This is what the Lord GOD says, “I’m sending four of my most destructive judgments—military invasion, famine, wild animals, and pestilence—into Jerusalem to destroy both human beings and livestock in it.

³⁷ therefore, watch out! I’m about to gather all your lovers from whom you’ve received your pleasure, everyone whom you’ve loved, and those whom you’ve hated. I’ll gather them together to oppose you from every side, and they’ll uncover your nakedness in their presence. Then they’ll see you completely naked. ³⁸ I’ll judge you with the same standards by which I issue verdicts against a woman who commits adultery and murder. I’ll avenge the blood you’ve shed with impassioned wrath.
³⁹ “I’ll also deliver you into their control, and they’ll break down your mounds, tear down your high places, strip off your clothes, remove your fine jewels, and then they’ll leave you stark naked!

² “Now, Son of Man, will you truly judge that blood-stained city? Then make her aware of all of her detestable practices.
³ “You are to say, ‘This is what the Lord GOD says: “The city keeps on shedding blood within her, hastening her time to be judged. She crafts idols that defile her.
⁴ “‘“You’re guilty because of the blood that you’ve shed. You were defiled by the idols that you’ve made. You’ve caused your judgment day to draw near and have even come to the end of your life. Therefore, I’ve made you an object of derision among the nations and to other lands. ⁵ Those who are both near and far away from you will scoff at you, because your reputation will be infamous and full of turmoil.
⁶ “‘“Watch out! Each of the princes of Israel has misused his authority to shed blood. ⁷ They’ve treated mothers and fathers among you with contempt. They’ve oppressed the foreigner among you. They’ve maltreated the orphan and the widow among you.
⁸ “‘“You have despised my sacred things and profaned my Sabbaths. ⁹ Slanderous men live among you, intent on shedding blood. They’ve eaten at the top of mountain shrines. They’ve crafted plans to do evil things among you. ¹⁰ They’ve revealed the nakedness of their father in your midst. They’ve humiliated those among you who were unclean due to their impurity. ¹¹ One of you commits detestable practices with his neighbor’s wife. Another sexually defiles his daughter-in-law. Another humiliates his sister, his own father’s daughter. ¹² They take bribes among you to shed blood. You’ve taken usury and exacted interest. You’ve gained control over your neighbor through extortion. And you’ve forgotten me,” declares the Lord GOD.
¹³ “Watch out! I’m vehemently angry about the unjust gains that you’ve earned, and about the blood that has been shed among you. ¹⁴ Can your heart stand up to this? Can your hands remain strong when I deal with you? I, the LORD, have spoken and will fulfill this. ¹⁵ I’m going to disperse you among the nations and scatter you to other lands. I’m going to put an end to your uncleanness.

²⁹ They’ll deal with you with hatred. They’ll take away your productivity, leaving you naked and defenseless, so that the nakedness of your sexual immorality will be uncovered—your licentious sexual immorality.

⁴⁶ The Coming InvasionThis is what the Lord GOD says: “Bring an army against them and deliver them over to terror and plunder.

³ Otherwise, I’ll strip her naked— as she was on the day she was born— make her like a wilderness, turn her into a parched land, and cause her to die of thirst.

¹⁰ So now I’ll reveal her lewdness to the eyes of her lovers, and no man will rescue her from my control.

¹⁸ Therefore, I advise you to buy from me gold purified in fire so you may be rich, white clothes to wear so your shameful nakedness won’t show, and ointment to put on your eyes so you may see.

⁷ The LORD said, “I have certainly seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry caused by their slave masters. I really do understand their pain,

¹⁷ I have said that I will bring you out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites—to a land flowing with milk and honey.”’

³¹ The people believed and understood that the LORD had paid attention to the Israelis and had seen their affliction. They bowed their heads and prostrated themselves in worship.

⁷ So we cried out to the LORD God of our ancestors, and he heard our cries and observed our affliction, trouble, and oppression.

²⁷ if it weren’t for dreading the taunting of their enemies— otherwise, their adversary might misinterpret and say, “Our power is great. It isn’t the LORD who made all of this happen.”’”

²⁹ O, that they were wise to understand this and consider their future!

¹¹ Hannah made a vow: “LORD of the Heavenly Armies, if you just look at the misery of your maid servant, remember me, and don’t forget your maid servant. If you give your maid servant a son, then I’ll give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and a razor is never to touch his head.”

¹² Perhaps the LORD will take note of my troubles and return good to me instead of curses today!”

²⁶ For the LORD observed Israel’s bitter misery, and there was no one left, neither slave nor free, and there was no deliverer for Israel.

³² “Now therefore, our God, the great, mighty, and awesome God, who keeps the covenant and gracious love, don’t let all of the difficulties seem trifling to you, all of hardships that have come upon us, upon our kings, upon our leaders, upon our priests, upon our prophets, upon our ancestors, and upon all of your people from the time of the kings of Assyria until this day.

¹⁸ Look upon my distress and affliction; forgive all my sins.

⁸ They say to themselves, “We’ll crush them completely;” They burned down all the meeting places of God in the land. ⁹ We see no signs for us; there is no longer a prophet, and no one among us knows the future.

²² Get up, God, and prosecute your case— remember that you’re being scorned by fools all day long. ²³ Don’t ignore the shout of those opposing you, The uproar of those who rebel against you continuously.

¹⁵³ Resh
God’s Word is TruthLook on my misery, and rescue me, for I do not ignore your instruction.

⁸ Never grant, LORD, the desires of the wicked; never condone their plans so they cannot exalt themselves. Interlude

¹ On the Abuse of AuthorityNext I turned to consider all kinds of oppression that exists on earth. Look at the tears of the oppressed— there is no one to comfort them. Power is on the side of their oppressors; so they have no comforters.

⁸ “For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because what they say and do opposes the LORD; they keep defying him.

⁴ Perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of the field commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, sent to mock the living God, and perhaps he will rebuke the words that the LORD your God has heard. So lift up a prayer for the remnant that still survives in this city.”

¹⁷ Extend your ear, LORD, and listen! Open your eyes, LORD, and look! Listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to mock the living God.

²³ Whom have you insulted and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!

²⁹ Your insolence has reached my ears, so I’ll put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I’ll make you turn back on the road by which you came.

² “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her heavy service has been completed, that her penalty has been paid, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.”

⁷ You said, ‘I will always continue—Queen forever!’ You didn’t take these things into your thinking, nor did you think about their consequences.

¹¹ “O afflicted one, passed back and forth, and not comforted, Look! I am about to set your stones in antimony, and lay your foundations with sapphires.

³⁴ On your skirts is found the lifeblood of the innocent poor, even though you didn’t catch them breaking in. Yet despite all these things,

³¹ The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?”

¹⁷ If you don’t listen, I’ll cry secretly because of your pride. My eyes will cry bitterly, flowing tears, because the LORD’s flock has been taken captive. ¹⁸ Say to the king and the queen mother, “Come take a lowly seat, because your beautiful crowns have fallen off your heads.”

²⁷ I’ve seen your detestable behavior: your adulteries, your passionate neighing, your lewd immorality on the hills in the field. How terrible it will be for you, Jerusalem! You are unclean. How much longer will this go on?”

⁷ They won’t break bread for the mourner to be consoled for the dead. They won’t give anyone the cup of consolation to drink for his father or mother.

²⁶ “Make him drunk for he has exalted himself against the LORD. Moab will wallow in his vomit, and he will be the object of mocking.

²⁹ “Summon many to Babylon, all those who bend the bow. Camp all around her, let no one escape. Repay her according to her deeds. Do to her just as she has done. For she has behaved arrogantly against the Lord, against the Holy One of Israel.

¹ The Sorrowful City How lonely she lies, the city that thronged with people! Like a widow she has become, this great one among nations! The princess among provinces has become a vassal. ² Bitterly she cries in the night, as tears stream down her cheeks. No one consoles her of all her friends. All her neighbors have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

¹⁷ Zion spreads out her hands; no one is there to comfort her. The LORD has issued an order against Jacob, that all who are around him are to be his enemies; Jerusalem has become unclean among them.

¹³ What can be said about you? To what should you be compared, fair Jerusalem? To what may I liken you, so I may comfort you, fair one of Zion? Indeed, your wound is as deep as the sea— who can heal you?

¹² The pot wearies me, but its thick rust won’t come off, even with fire. ¹³ There is wickedness in your obscene conduct. Even though I’ve cleansed you, your uncleanness cannot be washed away. You cannot be cleansed again until my rage against you has subsided.’

¹⁷ ‘So now, O God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his requests, and look with favor on your desolate sanctuary, for the sake of the Lord. ¹⁸ Turn your ear and listen, O God. Open your eyes and look at our desolation and at the city that is called by your name. We’re not presenting our requests before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great compassion. ¹⁹ ‘Lord, listen!‘Lord, forgive!‘Lord, take note and take action!‘For your own sake, don’t delay, my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.’”

¹⁴ Alluring a Wayward Wife“Therefore, look! I will now allure her. I will make her go out to the wilderness, and will speak to her heart.

¹⁰ This they will have in lieu of their pride, because they have insulted and mocked the people of the LORD of the Heavenly Armies.

¹⁹ and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.

⁴ He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship. As a result, he seats himself in the sanctuary of God and himself declares that he is God.
⁵ Don’t you remember that I repeatedly told you about these things when I was still with you? ⁶ You know what it is that is now holding him back, so that he will be revealed when his time comes. ⁷ For the secret of this lawlessness is already at work, but only until the person now holding it back gets out of the way. ⁸ Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy with the breath of his mouth, rendering him powerless by the manifestation of his coming.

¹⁷ For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who refuse to obey the gospel of God?

³ “No Ammonite or Moabite may participate in the assembly of the LORD, and none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD, to the tenth generation,

¹ Enemies of Israel Excluded
Later that day the book of Moses was read aloud so the people could hear it, and a written command was discovered therein permanently prohibiting the Ammonites and Moabites from coming into the congregation of God

⁴ Those who are opposing you roar where we were meeting with you; they unfurl their war banners as signs. ⁵ As one blazes a trail through a forest with an ax, ⁶ now they’re tearing down all its carved work with hatchets and hammers. ⁷ They burned your sanctuary to the ground, desecrating your dwelling place. ⁸ They say to themselves, “We’ll crush them completely;” They burned down all the meeting places of God in the land.

¹ A Psalm of Asaph
A Prayer for Jerusalem God, nations have invaded your land to desecrate your holy Temple, to destroy Jerusalem, ² to give the corpses of your servants as food for the birds of the skies and the flesh of your godly ones to the beasts of the earth; ³ to make their blood flow like water around Jerusalem, with no one being buried. ⁴ We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a mockery and a derision to those around us. ⁵ How long, LORD, will you be angry? Forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire? ⁶ Pour out your wrath upon the nations that do not acknowledge you, and over the kingdoms that do not call on your name. ⁷ For they consumed Jacob, making his dwelling place desolate.

¹³ Therefore my people go into exile because they lack understanding; my honored men go hungry, and the crowd is parched with thirst. ¹⁴ Therefore Sheol’s appetite has grown; it has opened its mouth beyond limit. Jerusalem’s nobility and her multitudes will go there, along with her brawlers and whoever is reveling within her.

¹⁰ Your holy cities have become a desert; Zion has become like a desert, Jerusalem a desolation. ¹¹ Our holy Temple and our splendor, where our ancestors praised you, have become a conflagration of fire, and all our dearest places have become ruins.

¹³ “I’ll give away your wealth and your treasures as plunder, for free, because of all your sins throughout your territory.

⁵ I’ll turn over all the wealth of this city, all its possessions, all its valuables, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah right into the hands of their enemies, and they’ll plunder them, capture them, and take them to Babylon.

⁵¹ We have been put to shame because we have heard insults. Disgrace has covered our faces because foreigners have come into the Holy Places of the LORD’s house.

¹⁷ The Chaldeans broke in pieces the bronze pillars that were in the LORD’s Temple and the stands and the bronze sea that were in the LORD’s Temple, and they carried all the bronze to Babylon. ¹⁸ They took away the pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the basins, the pans, and all the bronze utensils that were used in the temple service. ¹⁹ The captain of the guard took away the bowls, the fire pans, the basins, the pots, the lamp stands, the pans, and the bowls for libations, both those made of gold and those made of silver. ²⁰ There was too much bronze to weigh in the two pillars, the one sea, the twelve bronze oxen that were under the sea, and the stands which King Solomon had made for the LORD’s Temple.

⁷ Jerusalem remembers her time of affliction and misery; all her valued belongings of days gone by, when her people fell into enemy hands, with no one to help her, and her enemies stared at her, mocking her downfall.

²² I’ll turn my face away from them so that they’ll defile my treasured place. Robbers will enter and profane it!

⁷ “Desecrate my Temple,” he told them, “and fill its courtyard with the dead!” So they went out and began striking down people throughout the city.

⁷ You kept on bringing in foreigners, those who were uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to profane my sanctuary by being inside my Temple, and by doing so you’ve emptied my covenant, all the while offering my food—the fat and the blood—in addition to all of the other loathsome things you’ve done.

¹⁴ Signs of the End
“So when you see the destructive desecration standing where it should not be (let the reader take note), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.

⁵² They’ll besiege all your cities until your high and fortified walls in which you have trusted collapse throughout the land. Indeed, they will besiege all your cities, which the LORD your God gave you.”
⁵³ Cannibalism“You’ll eat your own children—the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God gave you—on account of the siege and the distress with which your enemy will oppress you. ⁵⁴ Even the compassionate man among you—the very sensitive one—will look with evil in his eyes toward his brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving sons, whom he spared. ⁵⁵ He will withhold from each of them the flesh of his sons that he is eating—since there will be nothing left—on account of the siege and distress with which your enemy will oppress you in all your cities. ⁵⁶ The most tender and sensitive lady among you, who doesn’t venture to touch the soles of her feet to the ground on account of her daintiness, will look with hostility in her eyes against her beloved husband, her sons, and her daughters. ⁵⁷ She will eat her afterbirth and her newborn children secretly—since there will be nothing left—on account of the siege and distress with which your enemy will oppress you in your cities.”

¹¹ An Egyptian Leads David to the AmalekitesThey found an Egyptian man in the field, and they took him to David. They gave him food to eat and provided water for him. ¹² They gave him part of a fig cake and two bunches of raisins. After he had eaten, he revived, since he had neither eaten food nor had he drunk water for three days and three nights.

²⁵ until there was a great famine throughout Samaria. The siege lasted until a donkey’s head cost 80 silver coins and one quarter of a unit of dove’s dung cost five silver coins.

⁴ “I must look insignificant to you! How can I answer you? I’m speechless.

¹⁵ My eyes look to the LORD continuously, because he’s the one who releases my feet from the trap. ¹⁶ Turn toward me and have mercy on me, for I am lonely and oppressed. ¹⁷ The troubles of my heart have increased; bring me out of my distress! ¹⁸ Look upon my distress and affliction; forgive all my sins. ¹⁹ Look how many enemies I have gained! They hate me with a vicious hatred.

⁹ I’ll cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and people will eat the flesh of their neighbors in the siege and in the distress to which their enemies and those seeking their lives will subject them.”’”

⁹ “Your majesty, these men have acted wickedly in all they have done to the prophet Jeremiah by throwing him into the cistern. He will die where he is because of the famine since there is no more bread in the city.”

⁶ By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine became so severe that there was no food for the people of the land.

¹² They ask their mothers, “Is there anything to eat or drink?” They faint in the streets of the city like wounded men. Their life ebbs away while they lie on their mother’s bosom.

²⁰ Look, LORD, and take note: To whom have you done this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cuddled? Should priests and prophets be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

⁴ The nursing child’s tongue cleaves to its palate from thirst. Young children beg for bread, but no one gives them any. ⁵ Those who enjoyed delicacies lie desolate in the streets. Those who were reared wearing purple scavenge in piles of trash. ⁶ The guilt of my cherished people surpasses the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, without a hand to help her. ⁷ Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk. Their bodies were more ruddy than rubies, their beards like the color of precious stones. ⁸ Now their faces are blacker than coal; they are unrecognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones; it has become dry like a stick. ⁹ Those who die by the sword are better off than those who die from starvation, who slowly waste away like those pierced through for lack of food from the fields. ¹⁰ With their own hands, compassionate women boil their own children— they become their food— when my beloved people were destroyed.

¹⁵ “Okay,” he responded. “I’ll allow you to substitute cow’s dung for human dung. Cook your food over that.”
¹⁶ He also told me, “Son of Man, look! I’m about to disrupt the source of bread in Jerusalem. As a result, they’ll ration bread by weight while their terror continues to grow and they’ll ration drinking water while their horror continues to mount! ¹⁷ Indeed, they’ll need bread and water, but everyone will be panic-stricken as they waste away in their iniquity.”

¹⁶ I’ll send arrows of severe famine in their direction, meant for destruction, which I’ll shoot, intending to destroy them. I’ll make you have more and more famines that will attack you, and I’ll disrupt your source of food.
¹⁷ “I’ll send famine and wild beasts against you that will rob you of your children. Pestilence and bloodshed will devastate you when I’ll declare war on you. I, the LORD, have spoken.”

¹³ Therefore I’ll make the heavens tremble. The earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the LORD of the Heavenly Armies, at the time of his burning anger.

¹⁶ They make their land into a desolate place, an object of lasting scorn. All who pass by will be appalled and will shake their heads.

²⁴ The fierce anger of the LORD won’t turn back until he has accomplished and established the plan of his heart. In the days to come, you will understand this.

⁶ The guilt of my cherished people surpasses the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, without a hand to help her. ⁷ Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk. Their bodies were more ruddy than rubies, their beards like the color of precious stones. ⁸ Now their faces are blacker than coal; they are unrecognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones; it has become dry like a stick. ⁹ Those who die by the sword are better off than those who die from starvation, who slowly waste away like those pierced through for lack of food from the fields. ¹⁰ With their own hands, compassionate women boil their own children— they become their food— when my beloved people were destroyed. ¹¹ The LORD has exhausted his wrath, pouring out his fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion, consuming its foundations.

¹² ‘He has confirmed his accusation that he spoke against us and against our rulers who governed us by bringing upon us great calamity, because nowhere in the universe has anything been done like what has been done to Jerusalem.

²¹ because at that time there will be great suffering, the kind that hasn’t happened from the beginning of the world until now and certainly won’t ever happen again.

²² because these are the days of vengeance when all that is written will be fulfilled.
²³ “How terrible it will be for those women who are pregnant or who are nursing babies in those days!—because there will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people.

²⁸ But Jesus turned to them and said, “Women of Jerusalem, stop crying for me. Instead, cry for yourselves and for your children, ²⁹ because the time is surely coming when people will say, ‘How blessed are the women who couldn’t bear children and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ ³⁰ Then people will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’, and to the hills, ‘Cover us up!’ ³¹ And if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

⁶⁵ Among those nations you’ll have no rest. There’ll be no resting place for the soles of your feet. Instead, the LORD will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a despairing spirit.

²¹ They provoked me to jealousy over non-gods, and to be angry over their vanity. Now I’ll provoke them to jealousy over a non-people; and over a foolish nation I’ll provoke them to anger. ²² For a fire breaks out in my anger— burning to the deepest part of the afterlife, consuming the earth and its produce and igniting the foundations of the mountains. ²³ I’ll bury them in misfortunes and bring them to an end with my arrows. ²⁴ Emaciated from famine, feverish from plague, and destroyed by bitterness, I’ll send fanged beasts against them, along with poisonous snakes that glide through the dust. ²⁵ Outside, the sword will cause bereavement; within, there will be terror for the young man and virgin alike, also for the nursing infant and the aged man.”

⁸ “For he has stumbled into a net with his own feet; he walked right into the network!

⁶ then at least you must know that God has accused me of wrong, and trapped me with his net.”

³⁰ My skin turns black all over me; and my bones seem burned from the heat.

¹⁴ I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax, melting within me.

¹⁰ My life is consumed by sorrow, my years with groaning. My strength has faltered because of my iniquity; my bones have been consumed.

⁴ Let those who seek my life be ashamed and disgraced; let those who plot evil against me be driven back and confounded.

¹¹ You have led us into a trap and set burdens on our backs.

² May those who seek to kill me be publicly humiliated. May those who take pleasure in my harm be turned back in humiliation. ³ May those who say “Aha! Aha!” be turned back because of their shameful deeds.

³ For my days are vanishing like smoke; my bones are charred as in a fireplace. ⁴ Withered like grass, my heart is overwhelmed, and I have even forgotten to eat my food. ⁵ Because of the sound of my sighing, my bones cling to my skin.

⁵ Let all who hate Zion be turned away and be ashamed.

¹⁷ Those who trust in carved idols will turn back and be completely disappointed, along with those who say to metal images, ‘You are our gods.’”

¹⁹ Jeremiah’s Lament for His People“My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the aching of my heart! My heart pounds within me; I cannot keep silent. For I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm for war. ²⁰ Disaster upon disaster is proclaimed, for the entire land is devastated. Suddenly, my tent is destroyed, in a moment my curtains. ²¹ How long will I see the battle standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?
²² The LORD’s Complaint about His People“For my people are foolish, they don’t know me. They’re stupid children, they have no understanding. They’re skilled at doing evil, but how to do good, they don’t know.”
²³ A Vision of ChaosI looked at the earth, and it was formless and void, at the heavens, and there was no light there. ²⁴ I looked at the mountains; they were quaking, and all the hills moved back and forth. ²⁵ I looked, and no people were there. All the birds of the sky had gone. ²⁶ I looked, and the fruitful land had become a desert. All its towns were broken down because of the LORD, because of his burning anger. ²⁷ For this is what the LORD says: “The entire land will be devastated, but I won’t completely destroy it. ²⁸ Because of this, the land will mourn, and the heavens above will be dark. Because I have spoken and decided, I won’t turn back from doing it.”
²⁹ A Lament for ZionAt the sound of the horseman and the archer the entire city flees. Its residents go into the thickets and climb among the rocks. Every city is abandoned, and no one lives in them.

⁶ My wrath and my anger were poured out, and they burned in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem so that they have become a ruin and a desolate place, as is the case today.’

²² May all of their wickedness come to your attention, and deal with them as you have done with me because of all my transgressions. For I am constantly groaning, and my heart is faint.

³ In his fierce wrath he cut off all the strength of Israel. He withdrew his protection as the enemy approached. He burned Jacob like a blazing fire consumes everything around it. ⁴ He bent his bow against us as would an enemy, his right hand cocked as would an adversary. He has killed everyone in whom we took pride; in the tent of cherished Zion he poured out his anger like fire.

¹⁷ Our eyes failed, searching in vain for hope; we kept watching and looking for a nation that would not help. ¹⁸ Our steps were closely stalked, so we couldn’t travel on our own streets. Our end is near, our days are over; indeed, our end has come. ¹⁹ Our pursuers were swifter than soaring eagles; they pursued us over the mountains, lying in wait for us in the wilderness. ²⁰ The LORD’s anointed, the breath of our life, was captured in their pits. About him we had said, “Under his protection we will survive among the nations.”

¹⁷ This is why our hearts faint, and why our eyes grow dim:

¹³ But I’ll throw my net over him. As a result, he’ll be captured with my net, and with it I’ll bring him to Babel, the land of the Chaldeans. He won’t see it, though he’ll die there.

²⁰ I’ll spread my net over him so that he’ll be caught in my snare. I’ll bring him to Babylon and carry out my sentence there because of his treachery toward me.

³ “This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘I’m coming fishing for you! Right in the sight of many nations they’ll haul you up in my dragnet.

¹² When they go, I’ll cast my net over them. I’ll bring them down, as one shoots birds in the sky. I’ll chasten them, as the assembly has already heard.

⁶ Who can stand before his fury? And who can endure his fierce anger? His displeasure pours out like fire, and rocks are broken to pieces because of him.

¹⁶ Habakkuk’s ResponseI heard and I trembled within. My lips quivered at the noise. My legs gave way beneath me, and I trembled. Nevertheless, I await the day of distress that will dawn on our invaders.

⁸ in blazing fire. He will take revenge on those who do not know God and on those who refuse to obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

²⁹ For “our God is an all-consuming fire.”

⁴⁸ you’ll serve your enemies whom the LORD your God will send against you. You will serve in famine and in drought, in nakedness, and in lack of everything. They’ll set a yoke of iron upon your neck until they have exterminated you.

²² The wicked person’s iniquities will capture him, and he will be held with the cords of his sin.

²⁵ to crush the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains I will trample him down. His yoke will turn away from you, and his burden from your shoulders.”

⁶ I was angry with my people, and I desecrated my heritage, and gave them into your control. You showed them no mercy; even on the aged you laid your yoke most heavily.

⁹ I’m now sending for all the tribes from the north, declares the LORD, and for my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. I’ll bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I’ll utterly destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an everlasting desolation.

⁸ If a nation and kingdom does not serve him—King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon—and does not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I’ll judge that nation with the sword, with famine, and with plague,” declares the LORD, “until I’ve completely destroyed it by his hand.

¹² Zedekiah Told to Submit to BabylonI spoke to Zedekiah king of Judah using words like these: “Bring your neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon. Serve him and his people, and you will live!

¹⁴ For this is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies, the God of Israel, says: “I’ve put an iron yoke on the necks of all these nations to serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. They’ll serve him, and I’ve even given the wild animals to him.”’”

⁵ The king of Babylon will take Zedekiah to Babylon and there he will stay until I judge him,” declares the LORD. “If you fight against the Chaldeans, you won’t succeed.”’”

²⁰ I’ll give them to their enemies who are seeking to kill them, and their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and the animals of the land. ²¹ I’ll give Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his officials into the domination of their enemies, to those who are seeking to kill them, and to the army of the king of Babylon that is coming against them.

¹⁷ Then King Zedekiah sent for Jeremiah and received him. The king questioned him secretly in his house: “Is there a message from the LORD?”
Jeremiah said, “There is,” and then he said, “You will be given into the hand of the king of Babylon.”

¹ The Fall of Jerusalem and the Capture of ZedekiahThis is how Jerusalem was captured: In the tenth month of the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it. ² On the ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, the wall of the city was breached. ³ All the officials of the king of Babylon came and sat in the Middle Gate, including Nergal-sarri-usur, governor of Sinmagir, Nabu-sarrussu-ukin the high official, Nergal-sarri-user, the chief official, and all the rest of the officials of the king of Babylon.
⁴ When Zedekiah king of Judah and all the soldiers saw them, they fled and went out of the city at night through the king’s garden through the gate between the two walls. Then he went out on the road toward the Arabah. ⁵ The Chaldean army pursued them and overtook Zedekiah on the plains of Jericho. When they seized him they brought him to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, and he passed judgment on him. ⁶ At Riblah, the king of Babylon executed Zedekiah’s sons right before his eyes. He also executed all the nobles of Judah. ⁷ Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him with bronze fetters to take him to Babylon.
⁸ The Chaldeans burned the palace and the houses of the people with fire, and they broke down the walls of Jerusalem. ⁹ Nebuzaradan, the captain of the Babylonian guard, took into exile in Babylon the rest of the people who remained in the city, those who had deserted to Nebuchadnezzar, and the rest of the people who remained.

⁹ “I’m bringing you out from the middle of it and I’m going to deliver you into the hands of strangers, because I’m going to carry out my sentence against you.

³¹ I’m going to pour out my indignation all over you. I’ll blow my fierce wrath against you and deliver you into the control of brutal men who are skilled at destruction.

²⁸ “This is what the Lord GOD says, ‘I’m about to turn you over to the control of those you hate, to the control of those from whom you turned away in disgust.

⁴ therefore you’d better look out! I’m going to turn you over to men from the East, who will dominate you. You will become their property. They will set up military encampments and permanent places in which to live among you, and then they’ll eat your fruit and drink your milk.

⁷ therefore you’d better watch out! I’m raising a clenched fist in your direction! I’m about to feed you to the surrounding nations as war plunder. I’m going to eliminate you as a nation and kill off those of you who survive to live in other countries. I’m going to destroy you, and that’s how you’ll learn that I am the LORD.’”

¹⁴ Therefore I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I—even I—will tear them to pieces, and then I will leave. I will take them away, and there will be no rescue.

³³ “A people whom you don’t know will devour what your land and labor produces. You’ll be only oppressed and discouraged continuously

⁸ who trampled and troubled the Israelis during that year—eighteen years for the Israelis who lived east of the Jordan River in Gilead, the land occupied by the Amorites.

³³ he ordered, “Throw her down!”
So they did, and her blood splashed against the wall and on the horses, while Jehu trampled her underfoot.

¹⁴ Then Nebuchadnezzar sent away into exile all of Jerusalem—all the captains, all the valiant soldiers, 10,000 captives, and all of the craftsmen and ironworkers. Nobody remained except the poorest people of the land. ¹⁵ He sent Jehoiachin into exile to Babylon, along with the king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officials, and the leading men of the land. He took them into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. ¹⁶ All 7,000 of the most valiant soldiers and 1,000 of the craftsmen and ironworkers—all physically fit and trained for battle—were brought by the king of Babylon into exile in Babylon.

⁴ The city was breached, and the entire army left during the night through the gate that stood between the two walls beside the royal garden, even though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city. They escaped through the Arabah, ⁵ but the Chaldean army pursued the king and overtook him in the Jericho plains, where his entire army was scattered. ⁶ The Chaldeans captured the king and brought him to Riblah, where the king of Babylon determined his sentence. ⁷ They executed Zedekiah’s sons in his presence, blinded Zedekiah, bound him with bronze chains, and transported him to Babylon.

¹¹⁸ You reject all who wander from your statutes, since their deceitfulness is vain.

⁵ “Now, let me tell you, won’t you please, what I’m going to do to my vineyard. “I’m going to take away its protective hedge, and it will be devoured; I’ll break down its wall, and it will be trampled.

¹⁸ “Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge sweeps by, you will be trampled by it.

² Who has aroused victory from the east, and has summoned it to his service, and has handed over nations to him? Who brings down kings, and turns them into dust with his sword, into windblown stubble with his bow?

³ “I have trodden the winepress alone, and from my people no one was with me, I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their lifeblood spattered on my garments, and I stained all my clothing.

¹⁷ “And deliver this message to them: ‘Let tears run down my face, night and day, and don’t let them stop, because my virgin daughter—my people— will be broken with a powerful blow, with a severe wound.

²¹ Therefore, make their children undergo famine, and deliver them over to death in time of war. May their women be childless widows! May their men be slaughtered! May their young men be slain by the sword in battle!

¹⁰ Indeed, even if you defeated the entire Chaldean army that is fighting against you, and they had only wounded men left in their tents, they would get up and burn this city with fire.’”’”

²⁶ Come to her from afar. Open up her barns. Pile her up like heaps of grain, and completely destroy her. Don’t leave any survivors.

³⁴ Judah’s Complaint against Babylon“King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me and crushed me. He set me down like an empty vessel. He swallowed me like a monster, and filled his belly with my delicacies. Then he washed me away.

³⁴ When any of the prisoners of the earth are crushed underfoot,

¹³ The Threat of the Fire FurnaceNebuchadnezzar flew into a rage and furiously ordered that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought before him.

¹⁰ Then my enemy will observe it, and shame will engulf the ones who asked me, ‘Where is the LORD your God?’ My own eyes will see them, they will be trampled on like mud in the streets.

³ and trample down the wicked. Indeed, they will become ashes under the soles of your feet on the day I do this,” says the LORD of the Heavenly Armies.

²⁴ They will fall by the edge of the sword and be carried off as captives among all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the unbelievers until the times of the unbelievers are fulfilled.”

²⁹ How much more severe a punishment do you think that person deserves who tramples on God’s Son, treats as common the blood of the covenant by which it was sanctified, and insults the Spirit of grace?

¹⁹ So the angel swung his sickle in the earth, gathered the grapes from the earth, and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. ²⁰ The wine press was trampled outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press as high as a horse’s bridle for about 1,600 stadia.

¹⁵ A sharp sword comes out of his mouth to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod and tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.

²⁰ Insults broke my heart. I despaired and looked for sympathy; but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.

¹³⁶ My eyes shed rivers of tears, when others do not obey your instruction.

¹⁰ I’ll weep and mourn for the mountains, and lament for the desert pastures, because they are desolate and no one passes through them. They don’t hear the lowing of the cattle. Both the birds of the sky and the animals have fled. They’re gone!

²¹ For death comes up through our windows; it has come into our palaces to eliminate children from the streets and young men from the town squares.

² Bitterly she cries in the night, as tears stream down her cheeks. No one consoles her of all her friends. All her neighbors have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

⁵ Her adversaries dominate her, her enemies prosper. For the LORD has made her suffer because of her many transgressions. Her children have gone away, taken into captivity in the presence of the enemy. ⁶ Fled from cherished Zion are all that were her splendor. Her princes have become like deer that cannot find their feeding grounds. They flee with strength exhausted from their pursuers.

¹⁸ Cry out from your heart to the Lord, wall of fair Zion! Let your tears run down like a river day and night. Allow yourself no rest, and don’t stop crying.

²⁰ Look, LORD, and take note: To whom have you done this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cuddled? Should priests and prophets be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? ²¹ Young men and the aged lie on the ground in the streets; my young women and young men have fallen by the sword. You killed them in your anger, slaughtering them without pity. ²² You have invited those who terrorize me to come around, as if today were a festival. No one has escaped or survived the time of the LORD’s anger. My enemy has finished off those whom I cuddled and raised.

⁴⁸ My eyes run with rivers of tears over the destruction of my cherished people. ⁴⁹ My tears pour down ceaselessly; I am far from relief

² Though the precious people of Zion were like fine gold, how they are valued like clay vessels, the handiwork of a potter! ³ Even wild animals nurse, suckling their young; but the women of my people are cruel, like ostriches in the wilderness.

¹² Even if they rear their children, I will, in turn, make them childless— in fact, woe to them when I turn away from them!

⁴¹ When he came closer and saw the city, he began to grieve over it: ⁴² “If you had only known today what could have brought you peace! But now it is hidden from your sight, ⁴³ because the days will come when your enemies will build walls around you, surround you, and close you in on every side. ⁴⁴ They will level you to the ground—you and those who live within your city limits. They will not leave one stone on another within your walls, because you didn’t recognize the time when you were visited.”

¹ Paul’s Concern for the Jewish PeopleI am telling the truth because I belong to the Messiah—I am not lying, and my conscience confirms it by means of the Holy Spirit. ² I have deep sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, ³ for I could wish that I myself were condemned and cut off from the Messiah for the sake of my brothers, my own people,

¹⁹ On Menstrual Discharges“When a woman has a discharge, and the blood is her monthly menstrual discharge from her body, then for seven days she is to remain in her menstrual uncleanness. Whoever touches her will remain unclean until evening. ²⁰ Everything that she sleeps on during her uncleanness will be unclean. Moreover, everything that she sits on will become unclean. ²¹ Anyone who touches her bed is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening. ²² Anyone who touches any of the objects on which she has sat is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening. ²³ Any bed or other object on which she sat that he touches will make him unclean until evening. ²⁴ When a man has sexual relations with her and her menstrual uncleanness touches him, he will be unclean for seven days. Every bed where he sleeps will remain unclean.
²⁵ “When a woman has a continuous discharge of blood many days beyond the time of her menstrual uncleanness, or if she has a discharge that lasts beyond the days of her menstrual uncleanness, her uncleanness is to be treated like the days of her menstruation—she’s unclean. ²⁶ Every bed on which she sleeps the whole time she has the discharge will be her own unclean bed, so that every object on which she sits becomes unclean like her menstrual uncleanness. ²⁷ Whoever touches them will become unclean. He is to wash his clothes and bathe with water and he will remain unclean until evening.

²² Solomon’s Prayer of Dedication
Then Solomon took his place in front of the LORD’s altar in the presence of the entire congregation of Israel, spread out his hands toward heaven,

³⁸ whatever prayer or request is made, no matter whether it’s made by a single man or by all of your people Israel, each praying out of his own hurting heart and anguish and stretching out his hands toward this Temple,

² The LORD sent raiding parties from the Chaldeans, Arameans, Moabites, and Ammonites against Jehoiakim. He sent them against Judah to destroy it, in keeping with the message from the LORD that he had spoken through his servants, the prophets. ³ It was truly by the command of the LORD against Judah that it came, in order to remove them from his sight, because of every sin that Manasseh had committed, ⁴ as well as for the innocent blood that he had shed. He had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD would not forgive them.

¹ so on the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and his entire army approached Jerusalem, attacked it, encamped against it, and built a siege wall that surrounded the city.

¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer, I’ll hide my eyes from you. Even though you pray repeatedly, I won’t listen. Your hands are full of blood, your fingers drenched with iniquity.”

³ Shepherds and their flocks will come against her. They’ll pitch their tents all around her, and every one will tend his flock in his own place.

⁶ Both the most and the least important people will die in this land, and they won’t be buried. People won’t mourn for them. They won’t cut themselves, nor will they shave their heads for them.

⁴ ‘This is what the LORD God of Israel says: “I’m about to turn against you the weapons of war that are in your hands and with which you are fighting the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside the walls. I’ll gather them into the center of this city. ⁵ Because of my anger, wrath, and great fury, I’ll fight against you myself with an outstretched hand and a strong arm.

²² Look, I’m in command of them,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I’ll bring them back to this city. They’ll capture it and burn it with fire, and I’ll turn the towns of Judah into desolate places without inhabitants.’”

¹⁶ Because of all this, I weep; my eyes stream with tears because far from me is the comforter of my soul. My children are sorrowful, because the enemy has won.

¹ The Condition of Israel How the Lord in his wrath shamed cherished Zion! He cast down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, He did not remember his footstool in the time of his anger. ² The Lord swallowed up without pity all of Jacob’s habitations. In his wrath he tore down the strongholds of fair Judah. He cast to the ground in dishonor both her kingdom and its rulers. ³ In his fierce wrath he cut off all the strength of Israel. He withdrew his protection as the enemy approached. He burned Jacob like a blazing fire consumes everything around it. ⁴ He bent his bow against us as would an enemy, his right hand cocked as would an adversary. He has killed everyone in whom we took pride; in the tent of cherished Zion he poured out his anger like fire. ⁵ The Lord has become like an enemy— he has devoured Israel. He has devoured all of her palaces, destroying her fortresses. He filled cherished Judah with mourning and lament. ⁶ He plowed under his Temple like a garden, spoiling his tent. The LORD abolished in Zion both festivals and Sabbaths. In his fierce wrath he despised both king and priest. ⁷ The Lord rejected his altar, disavowing his sanctuary. He gave up her palace walls to the control of the enemy. They shouted in the LORD’s Temple, as though they were attending a day of celebration. ⁸ The LORD planned to destroy the walls of cherished Zion. He measured them with his line. He did not withhold his hand from destruction. He made both ramparts and defensive walls mourn; they languish together.

¹⁷ The LORD did what he planned. He carried out his threat. Just as he commanded long ago, he has torn down without pity; He let the enemy boast about you and has exalted the power of your enemies. ¹⁸ Cry out from your heart to the Lord, wall of fair Zion! Let your tears run down like a river day and night. Allow yourself no rest, and don’t stop crying. ¹⁹ Get up and cry aloud in the night, at the beginning of every hour. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord! Lift up your hands toward him for the lives of your children, who are fainting away at every street corner.

¹⁵ “Go away! Unclean!” they shouted at them. “Go away! Go away! Don’t touch!” When they fled away and wandered, those among the nations decreed, “They cannot live here!”

²³ “Forge a chain, because the land is full of bloody judgment and the city is filled with violence. ²⁴ Therefore, I’m bringing the worst of the nations, who will take possession of their houses. I’ll cause the pride of the mighty to cease, and their sanctuaries will be profaned.

¹⁷ “Son of Man, when the house of Israel was living on their own land, they defiled it with their lifestyles and behavior; they were as disqualified to be with me as a menstruating woman is to you.

⁸ Israel has been devoured; now they will live among the nations like a worthless container.

²⁷ Pharaoh sent word and called for Moses and Aaron. “I’ve sinned this time,” he told them. “The LORD is righteous, but I and my people are wicked.

³² Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you watch, and you won’t be able to approach them at all, and you’ll be powerless to help.
³³ “A people whom you don’t know will devour what your land and labor produces. You’ll be only oppressed and discouraged continuously ³⁴ until you are driven insane from what your eyes will see.
³⁵ “The LORD will inflict you with incurable boils on your knees and legs, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
³⁶ “The LORD will banish you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you’ll serve other gods of wood and stone. ³⁷ You’ll become a desolation and a proverb, and you’ll be mocked among the people where the LORD will drive you.”
³⁸ Complete Reversal“You’ll plant many seeds in a field, but your harvest will be small because the locust will consume it. ³⁹ You’ll plant a vineyard, but you won’t drink wine or harvest any grapes, because worms will consume it. ⁴⁰ You’ll have olive trees throughout your territory, but you won’t be able to anoint yourself with oil, because the olives will drop off the trees. ⁴¹ You’ll bear sons and daughters, but they won’t belong to you, because they’ll go into captivity.

⁴ Flawless is the work of the Rock, because all his ways are just. A faithful God—never unjust— righteous and upright is he.

⁷ Adoni-bezek used to brag, “Seventy kings without thumbs and big toes used to eat what was left under my table. God has repaid me for what I’ve done.” They brought him to Jerusalem, and he later died there.

¹⁴ If you fear the LORD, serve him, obey him, and don’t rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then both you and the king who rules over you will truly follow the LORD your God. ¹⁵ But if you don’t obey the LORD and rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then the LORD will turn against you as he did against your ancestors.

²³ Indeed, rebellion is the sin of divination, and arrogance is iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected this message from the LORD, he has rejected you from being king.”

⁸ “This Temple will become a pile of ruins. Everyone who passes by it will be so astounded that they will ask, ‘Why did the LORD do this to this land and to this Temple?’ ⁹ They will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and served them. That’s why the Lord has brought all of this disaster on them.’”

²¹ so he cried out to the man of God from Judah: “This is what the LORD says: ‘Because you disobeyed a command from the LORD and haven’t done what the LORD your God commanded you to do,

¹³ “After all that has happened to us because of our evil behavior, and because of our great sin—considering that you our God have punished us less than our iniquities deserve and have given us this deliverance—

⁶ please turn your attention to observe carefully and listen to the prayer of your servant today that I am presenting to you day and night on behalf of your servants, the Israelis.
“I confess the sins that we Israelis have committed against you. Both I and my father’s house have sinned. ⁷ We have abandoned you by not keeping your commands, your ceremonies, and your judgments that you proscribed to your servant Moses. ⁸ Please remember what you spoke in commanding your servant Moses. You said, ‘If you rebel, I will scatter you among the nations

²⁶ “Then they disobeyed, rebelled against you, and threw your Law behind their backs. They murdered your prophets who had admonished the people to return to you, committing terrible blasphemies.

³³ You are righteous in all that is happening to us, because you have acted faithfully while we have practiced evil.

¹¹ because they had rebelled against the command of God, despising the advice of the Most High.

⁷⁵ I know, LORD, that your decrees are just, and that you have rightfully humbled me.

¹⁷ The LORD is righteous in all of his ways and graciously loving in all of his activities.

¹ Jeremiah’s Complaint about Justice You are righteous, LORD, even when I bring a complaint to you. But I want to discuss justice with you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper, while all who are treacherous are at ease?

⁸ “Many nations will pass by this city and say to one another, ‘Why did the LORD do this to this great city?’ ⁹ Then people will respond, ‘It is because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and have bowed down to other gods and served them.’

²⁸ And if they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink it, say to them, ‘This is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies says: “You will surely drink it! ²⁹ Look, I’m beginning to bring disaster on the city that is called by my name, and do you actually think you will avoid punishment? You won’t avoid punishment because I’m summoning the sword against all those who live in the land,” declares the LORD of the Heavenly Armies.’”

¹² For this is what the LORD says: “Look, those who don’t deserve to drink the cup will surely drink it, and will you actually go unpunished? You won’t go unpunished! You will certainly drink it!

¹² May it not befall you, all who pass along the road! Look and see: Is there any grief like my grief dealt out to me, by which the LORD afflicted me in the time of his fierce wrath?

⁴² As for us, we have sinned and rebelled; but you have not pardoned us.

²² But look! There will be a remnant who escapes, a few sons and daughters to be brought out. Look! They’ll come out to you and you’ll see how they’ve lived and what they’ve done, and you’ll be comforted concerning the catastrophe that I brought on Jerusalem, including everything that I brought against her. ²³ They’ll comfort you when you see how they’ve lived and what they’ve done, because you’ll know for certain that I haven’t done anything that I’ve done against them without any reason,” declares the Lord GOD.

⁷ ‘To you, Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us, open humiliation—even to this day, to the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, both those who are nearby and those who are far away in all the lands to which you drove them because of their unfaithful acts that they committed against you.

⁵ The righteous LORD who lives within her will do no wrong; he will bring justice to light morning by morning. He never fails, but the unjust are shameless.
The Integrity of God’s Justice

⁵ But because of your stubborn and unrepentant heart you are reserving wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the Law says applies to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.

³ They sang the song of God’s servant Moses and the song of the lamb: “Your deeds are both spectacular and amazing, Lord God Almighty. Your ways are just and true, King of the nations. ⁴ Lord, who won’t fear and praise your name? For you alone are holy, and all the nations will come and worship you because your judgments have been revealed.”

⁵ Then I heard the angel in charge of the water say, “You are just. You are the one who is and who was, the Holy One, because you have judged these things. ⁶ You have given them blood to drink because they spilled the blood of saints and prophets. This is what they deserve.” ⁷ Then I heard the altar reply, “Yes, Lord God Almighty, your judgments are true and just.”

¹³ Job’s Family and Friends Abandoned Him“My brothers are alienated from me; my acquaintances are estranged; ¹⁴ my relatives have failed me; and my friends have abandoned me. ¹⁵ Those who live in my house— and my maidservants, too!— treat me like a stranger; they think I’m a foreigner. ¹⁶ “I call to my servant, but he doesn’t respond, even though I beg to him earnestly. ¹⁷ My wife says my breath stinks; even my children say I smell bad! ¹⁸ Even little children hate me; when I get up, they mock me. ¹⁹ My closest friends detest me; even the ones I love have turned against me.

²⁸ “But where are your gods that you made for yourselves? Let them rise up, if they can deliver you in the time of your trouble. You have as many gods as you have towns, Judah.

¹⁵ Therefore, this is what the LORD says about the false prophets who prophesy in my name, ‘There will be no sword and famine in this land’ (though I haven’t sent them): ‘By the sword and by famine these prophets will be finished off! ¹⁶ The people to whom they have prophesied will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword. There will be no one to bury them, their wives, their sons, or their daughters. I’ll pour out on them the judgment they deserve.’”
¹⁷ “And deliver this message to them: ‘Let tears run down my face, night and day, and don’t let them stop, because my virgin daughter—my people— will be broken with a powerful blow, with a severe wound. ¹⁸ If I go out into the field, I see those slain by the sword! If I go into the city, I see the ravages of the famine! Indeed, both prophet and priest ply their trade in the land, but they don’t know anything.’”

¹¹ Indeed, both priest and prophet are ungodly. Even in my house I find evil,” declares the LORD. ¹² Therefore their way will be slippery. They’ll be driven out into the darkness, where they’ll fall. For I’ll bring disaster on them, the year of their judgment,” declares the LORD. ¹³ “Among the prophets of Samaria I saw a disgusting thing, for they prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray. ¹⁴ Among the prophets of Jerusalem I saw a horrible thing, for they commit adultery and live a lie. They strengthen the hands of those who do evil, so that no one repents of his evil. All of them are like Sodom to me, and her residents like Gomorrah.”
¹⁵ Therefore, this is what the LORD God of the Heavenly Armies says about the prophets, “I’m about to make them eat wormwood and drink poisoned water, because godlessness has spread from the prophets of Jerusalem throughout the land.”

¹³ Why should you and your people die by the sword, by famine, and by plague as the LORD has decreed about the nation that does not serve the king of Babylon? ¹⁴ Don’t listen to the words of the prophets who say to you, ‘You won’t serve the king of Babylon.’ Indeed, they’re prophesying a lie to you. ¹⁵ For I didn’t send them,” declares the LORD, “and they’re falsely prophesying in my name, so I will drive both you and the prophets who prophesy to you out of the land.”

⁷ “This is what the LORD God of Israel says: ‘This is what you are to say to the king of Judah who sent you to me to inquire of me, “Look, Pharaoh’s army that has come to help will go back to its own land of Egypt, ⁸ and then the Chaldeans will come back to fight against this city, to capture it, and burn it with fire.”’ ⁹ “This is what the LORD says: ‘Don’t deceive yourselves by saying, “The Chaldeans will surely go away from us,” ‘for they won’t go.

⁷ Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk. Their bodies were more ruddy than rubies, their beards like the color of precious stones. ⁸ Now their faces are blacker than coal; they are unrecognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones; it has become dry like a stick. ⁹ Those who die by the sword are better off than those who die from starvation, who slowly waste away like those pierced through for lack of food from the fields.

¹² Princes they have hung by their hands; elders they have disrespected.

⁴⁰ Return from Captivity“Nevertheless, when they confess their iniquity, the iniquity of their ancestors, and their unfaithfulness by which they acted unfaithfully against me by living life contrary to me— ⁴¹ causing me to oppose them and take them to the land of their enemies so that the uncircumcised foreskin of their hearts can be humbled and so that they accept the punishment of their iniquity— ⁴² then I’ll remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham. I’ll also remember the land.

²⁵ Outside, the sword will cause bereavement; within, there will be terror for the young man and virgin alike, also for the nursing infant and the aged man.”

⁴⁷ if they turn their hearts back to you in the land where they have been taken captive, repent, and pray to you—even if they do so in the land of their captivity—confessing, ‘We have sinned, we have committed abominations, and practiced wickedness,’ ⁴⁸ if they return to you with all of their heart and with all of their soul in the land of their enemies who have taken them captive, as they pray to you in the direction of their land that you have given to their ancestors and to the city that you have chosen, and to the Temple that I have built for your name, ⁴⁹ then hear their prayer and requests in heaven, where you reside, and fight for their cause, ⁵⁰ forgiving your people who have sinned against you, along with their transgressions by which they have transgressed against you.“Show your compassion in the presence of those who have taken them captive, so they may show compassion on them,

²⁷ I’m boiling mad inside, and I won’t remain silent; the time for my affliction to confront me has arrived.

²⁷ The Song of the Ransomed“He’ll sing to mankind with these words: ‘I’ve sinned. I have twisted what is right. Yet he has not repaid me like I deserve.

³ For I acknowledge my transgression; my sin remains continuously before me. ⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned, and done what was evil in your sight. As a result, you are just in your pronouncement and clear in your judgment.

¹³ Whoever hides his transgressions will not succeed, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will find mercy.

¹¹ Therefore my insides moan like a lyre for Moab, and my innermost being for Kir-hareseth.

¹⁴ Like a swallow or a crane I chirp, I moan like a dove. My eyes look weakly upward. O Lord, I am oppressed, so stand up for me!

³⁵ you say, ‘I’m innocent. Surely his anger has turned away from me.’” “I’m about to bring charges against you because you say, ‘I haven’t sinned.’

¹³ ‘Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have rebelled against the LORD your God, and have scattered your favors to strangers under every green tree. But you haven’t obeyed me,’ declares the LORD.

¹⁹ Jeremiah’s Lament for His People“My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the aching of my heart! My heart pounds within me; I cannot keep silent. For I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm for war.

²¹ For death comes up through our windows; it has come into our palaces to eliminate children from the streets and young men from the town squares. ²² Speak! ‘This is what the LORD says: “The corpses of people will fall like dung on the surface of the field, and like a row of cut grain behind the harvester when there is no one to gather it.”’”

¹⁸ If I go out into the field, I see those slain by the sword! If I go into the city, I see the ravages of the famine! Indeed, both prophet and priest ply their trade in the land, but they don’t know anything.’”

²⁰ God’s Gracious Response“Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a darling child? Indeed, as often as I’ve spoken about him, I surely still remember him. Therefore I deeply yearn for him. I’ll surely have great compassion on him,” declares the LORD.

³⁶ Therefore my heart wails for Moab like flutes and my heart wails for the men of Kir-heres like flutes. Therefore they’ll lose the abundance they produced.

¹⁵ The sword lurks outside, but pestilence and famine are on the prowl inside the house. Whoever is in the field will die by violence, while famine and pestilence will devour those in the city.

⁸ “How can I give up on you, Ephraim? I will deliver you, will I not, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? I can’t make you like Zeboim, can I? My heart stirs within me; my compassion also fans into flame!

¹⁸ I will get up, go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and you. ¹⁹ I don’t deserve to be called your son anymore. Treat me like one of your hired men.”’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even look up to heaven. Instead, he continued to beat his chest and said, ‘O God, be merciful to me, the sinner that I am!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man, rather than the other one, went down to his home justified, because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the person who humbles himself will be exalted.”