because we are about to destroy this place. The complaints that have reached the Lord about its people have become so bad that he has sent us to destroy it.”
Lot went immediately to speak to the men who were engaged to marry his daughters. “Get up quickly and leave,” he said, “because the Lord is about to destroy the town!” But they thought it was just a joke.
Why should the Egyptians be able to say, ‘He brought them out with the evil purpose of killing them in the mountains, wiping them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger. Please change your mind over the threat against your people.
For the Lord had previously told Moses, “Tell the people of Israel, ‘You are a rebellious people. If I was with you for just a moment, I would wipe you out. Now remove your jewelry, and I'll decide what to do with you.’”
Then the angel of the Lord went to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 of them. When the survivors woke up in the morning, they were surrounded by dead bodies.
The Lord told Moses, “Put Aaron's walking stick back in front of the Testimony, to be kept there as a reminder to warn anyone who wants to rebel, so that you may stop their complaining against me. Otherwise they'll die.”
Then I heard another voice from heaven calling out, “My people, come out of her, so that you don't participate in her sinful ways, and so that you don't experience her plagues.