For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.
For the time has come for judgement to begin with God’s household, and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God?
Yet the Lord had his heart set on your ancestors and loved them. He chose their descendants after them #– #he chose you out of all the peoples, as it is today.
He has carried out his words that he spoke against us and against our rulers , by bringing on us a disaster that is so great that nothing like what has been done to Jerusalem has ever been done under all of heaven.
Slaughter the old men, the young men and women, as well as the children and older women, but do not come near anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.’ So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple.
This is what the Lord says concerning these people: Truly they love to wander; they never rest their feet. So the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.
What will you say when he appoints close friends as leaders over you, ones you yourself trained? Won’t labour pains seize you, as they do a woman in labour?
Therefore, this is what the Lord of Armies says: ‘I am about to punish them. The young men will die by the sword; their sons and daughters will die by famine.
Pour out your wrath on the nations that don’t recognise you and on the families that don’t call on your name, for they have consumed Jacob; they have consumed him and finished him off and made his homeland desolate.
Indeed, I am about to summon all the clans and kingdoms of the north.’ This is the Lord’s declaration. They will come, and each king will set up his throne at the entrance to Jerusalem’s gates. They will attack all her surrounding walls and all the other cities of Judah.
From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.
Because of the continual prostitution of the prostitute, the attractive mistress of sorcery, who treats nations and clans like merchandise by her prostitution and sorcery,
Though they offer sacrificial gifts , and eat the flesh, the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their guilt and punish their sins; they will return to Egypt.
And I will punish her for the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense. She put on her rings and her jewellery and followed her lovers, but she forgot me. This is the Lord’s declaration.
For I have chosen him so that he will command his children and his house after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. This is how the Lord will fulfil to Abraham what he promised him.’
‘Indeed, ask about the earlier days that preceded you, from the day God created mankind on the earth and from one end of the heavens to the other: Has anything like this great event ever happened, or has anything like it been heard of?
The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Judah for three crimes, even four, because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord and have not kept his statutes. The lies that their ancestors followed have led them astray.
Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and to those who feel secure on the hill of Samaria – the notable people in this first of the nations, those the house of Israel comes to.
Therefore, the Lord says: I am now planning a disaster against this nation; you cannot free your necks from it. Then you will not walk so proudly because it will be an evil time.
Now go, lead the people to the place I told you about; see, my angel will go before you. But on the day I settle accounts, I will hold them accountable for their sin.’