But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins.
‘Meshech and Tubal , are there, with all their hordes. Their graves are all around them. All of them are uncircumcised, slain by the sword, although their terror was once spread in the land of the living.
They said to me, ‘The remnant in the province, who survived the exile, are in great trouble and disgrace. Jerusalem’s wall has been broken down, and its gates have been burned.’
And they said, ‘Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.’
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, ‘You have brought trouble on me, making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. We are few in number; if they unite against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.’
Only gleanings will be left in Israel, as if an olive tree had been beaten – two or three olives at the very top of the tree, four or five on its fruitful branches. This is the declaration of the Lord, the God of Israel.
So I will hurl you from this land into a land that you and your ancestors have not known. There you will worship other gods both day and night, for I will not grant you grace.”
Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but this day public shame belongs to us: the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and all Israel #– #those who are near and those who are far, in all the countries where you have banished them because of the disloyalty they have shown towards you.
I scattered them with a windstorm over all the nations that had not known them, and the land was left desolate behind them, with no one coming or going. They turned a pleasant land into a desolation.’
‘The Lord will bring you and your king that you have appointed to a nation neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will worship other gods, of wood and stone.
‘Therefore say, “This is what the Lord God says: Though I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.”