People will go into caves in the rocks and holes in the ground, away from the terror of the Lord and from his majestic splendour, when he rises to terrify the earth.
They will be killed by the sword , and be led captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles , until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Wherever you live the cities will be in ruins and the high places will be desolate, so that your altars will lie in ruins and be desecrated, your idols smashed and obliterated, your shrines cut down, and what you have made wiped out.
You are to burn a third of it in the city when the days of the siege have ended; you are to take a third and slash it with the sword all around the city; and you are to scatter a third to the wind, for I will draw a sword to chase after them.
You have turned things around, as if the potter were the same as the clay. How can what is made say about its maker, ‘He didn’t make me’? How can what is formed say about the one who formed it, ‘He doesn’t understand what he’s doing’?
For the fortified city will be desolate, pastures deserted and abandoned like a wilderness. Calves will graze there, and there they will spread out and strip its branches.
I will make it a wasteland. It will not be pruned or weeded; thorns and briars will grow up. I will also give orders to the clouds that rain should not fall on it.
I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line used on Samaria and the mason’s level used on the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem clean as one wipes a bowl #– #wiping it and turning it upside down.
Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known.
Then Johanan son of Kareah suggested to Gedaliah in private at Mizpah, ‘Let me go and kill Ishmael son of Nethaniah. No one will know it. Why should he kill you and allow all of Judah that has gathered around you to scatter and the remnant of Judah to perish? ’
When they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city officials, shouting, ‘These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too,
Israel is a stray lamb, chased by lions. The first who devoured him was the king of Assyria; the last who crushed his bones was King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
A lion has gone up from his thicket; a destroyer of nations has set out. He has left his lair to make your land a waste. Your cities will be reduced to uninhabited ruins.
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will shake from its foundations at the wrath of the Lord of Armies, on the day of his burning anger.
And every stroke of the appointed staff that the Lord brings down on him will be to the sound of tambourines and lyres; he will fight against him with brandished weapons.
It will never go out #– #day or night. Its smoke will go up for ever. It will be desolate, from generation to generation; no one will pass through it for ever and ever.
‘King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty dish; he has swallowed me like a sea monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies; he has vomited me out.
I will stretch out my hand against them, and wherever they live I will make the land a desolate waste, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they will know that I am the Lord.’