“Then, Jerusalem, you will no longer be ashamed of the wrong things your people do against me. That is because I will remove all the bad people from Jerusalem. I will take away all the proud people. There will not be any of them on my holy mountain.
And they will no longer continue to make themselves filthy with their idols and horrible statues or with any of their other crimes. Instead, I will save them from all the places where they have sinned, and I will wash them and make them pure. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
Israel is like a vine that grows plenty of fruit. But as Israel got more and more things, he built more and more altars to honor false gods. His land became better and better, so he put up better and better stones to honor false gods.
I am already making these bad things happen to Jerusalem, the city that is called by my name. Maybe you people think that you will not be punished, but you are wrong. You will be punished! I am giving the command for war to come against all the people of the earth.’” This message is from the Lord.
“Moab has never known trouble. Moab is like wine left to settle. Moab has never been poured from one jar to another. He has not been taken into captivity. So he tastes as he did before, and his smell has not changed.”
Tell the people that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘I will gather the people of Israel from among the nations. I will gather them from all around and bring them back to their own land.
Now Nineveh is empty. Everything is stolen. The city is ruined. People have lost their courage, their hearts melt with fear, their knees knock together, their bodies shake, and their faces turn pale.
Get water and store it inside your city, because the enemy soldiers will surround your city. Make your defenses strong! Get clay to make more bricks and mix the mortar. Get the molds for making bricks.