Judah was an empty desert, and it stayed that way for seventy years, to make up for all the years it was not allowed to rest. These things happened just as Jeremiah the LORD's prophet had said.
But even if they roar like a fearsome flood, God will give the command to turn them back. They will be like dust, or like straw blowing across the hills in a storm.
People of Israel, I have made my decision. An army from a distant country will attack you. I've chosen an ancient nation, and you won't understand their language.
Tell the people of Israel that I, the LORD, say that some day everyone in Jerusalem will shake when they eat and tremble when they drink. Their country will be destroyed and left empty, because they have been cruel and violent.
Parents will be so desperate for food that they will eat their own children, and children will eat their parents. Those who survive this horror will be scattered in every direction.
I'll send wild animals to attack you, and they will gobble up your children and livestock. So few of you will be left that your roads will be deserted.
The LORD is powerful, yet patient; he makes sure that the guilty are always punished. He can be seen in storms and in whirlwinds; clouds are the dust from his feet.
His troops had come like a storm, hoping to scatter us and glad to gobble us up. To them we were refugees in hiding— but you smashed their heads with their own weapons.
Like a cloud, the LORD God will appear over his people, and his arrows will flash like lightning. God will sound his trumpet and attack in a whirlwind from the south.
You will work hard on your farms, but everything you harvest will be eaten by foreigners, who will ill-treat you and abuse you for the rest of your life.
Those of you who survive will be scattered to every nation on earth, and you will have to worship stone and wood idols that never helped you or your ancestors.