This is the divine revelation about the desert by the sea. Like a storm sweeping through the Negev, an invader will come from the desert, from a terrifying land.
They have hardly been planted. They have hardly been sown. They have hardly taken root in the ground. Then he blows on them and they wither, and a windstorm sweeps them away like straw.
The sound is echoing to the ends of the earth because the Lord has brought charges against the nations. He will judge all humans. He will kill the wicked, declares the Lord.’
At that time it will be said to these people and to Jerusalem: “A hot wind from the heights will blow in the desert on the tracks of my people. It will not be a wind that winnows or cleanses.
As I looked, I saw a storm coming from the north. There was an immense cloud with flashing lightning surrounded by a bright light. The middle of the lightning looked like glowing metal.
“ ‘This is what the Almighty Lord says: In my fury I’ll cause a storm to break out. In my anger rain will pour down, and hailstones will destroy the wall.
I will set fire to the walls of Rabbah and burn down its palaces while troops are shouting on the day of battle and winds are howling on the day of the storm.
I used a windstorm to scatter them among all the nations, nations they hadn’t even heard of. They left behind a land so ruined that no one is able to travel through it. They have turned a pleasant land into a wasteland.”
The Lord will appear over them, and his arrow will go out like lightning. The Almighty Lord will blow the ram’s horn and will march in the storms from the south.