So Jeroboam, I will bring troubles to your family. I will kill all the men in your family. I will destroy your family completely, like fire burning up dung.
“The Lord will judge his people. They are his servants, and he will show them mercy. He will see that their power is gone. He will see that they are all helpless— the slaves and free people too.
“Look, I will punish your descendants. During the festivals, you priests offer sacrifices to me. You take the dung and inside parts from the dead animals and throw them away. But I will smear the dung on your faces, and you will be thrown away with it!
The Lord said, “I will make life very hard on the people. They will walk around like the blind who don’t know where they are going. That will happen because they sinned against the Lord. Their blood will be spilled on the ground. Their dead bodies will lie like dung on the ground.
“The enemy soldiers will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers. I will also scrape the topsoil from her land. I will make Tyre a bare rock.
They will spread the bones on the ground under the sun, the moon, and the stars. The people of Jerusalem love to worship the sun, the moon, and the stars. No one will gather the bones and bury them again. So the bones of those people will be like dung thrown on the ground.
“I will change Babylon. It will be a place for animals, not people. It will be a swamp. I will use the ‘broom of destruction’ to sweep Babylon away.” The Lord All-Powerful said this.
But you were thrown out of your grave like a branch cut from a tree and thrown away. You are like a dead man who fell in battle, trampled under the feet of other soldiers. Now you look like any other dead man wrapped in burial clothes.
So the Lord became angry with his people, and he raised his hand to punish them. Even the mountains shook with fear. Dead bodies were left in the streets like garbage. And he is not finished yet. He is still angry, and his arm is raised to continue punishing his people.
I will stretch the measuring line of Samaria and the plumb line of Ahab’s family over Jerusalem. A man wipes a dish, and then he turns it upside down. I will do that to Jerusalem.
As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, if you hadn’t come quickly to meet me, not one man in Nabal’s family would have lived until tomorrow morning. But the Lord prevented me from hurting you.”
“The Lord, the God of Israel, promised that your father’s family would serve him forever. But now the Lord says, ‘That will never be! I will honor people who honor me, but bad things will happen to those who refuse to respect me.
You are loyal and kind to thousands of people, but you also bring punishment to children for their fathers’ sins. Great and powerful God, your name is the Lord All-Powerful.