The Lord God said to the snake, “Because you did this, a curse will be put on you. You will be cursed as no other animal, tame or wild, will ever be. You will crawl on your stomach, and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
Wolves and lambs will eat together in peace. Lions will eat hay like oxen, and a snake on the ground will not hurt anyone. They will not hurt or destroy each other on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord.
If I go into the country, I see people killed by swords. If I go into the city, I see much sickness, because the people have no food. Both the priests and the prophets have been taken to a foreign land.’ ”
“I will send four kinds of destroyers against them,” says the Lord. “I will send war to kill, dogs to drag the bodies away, and the birds of the air and wild animals to eat and destroy the bodies.
“They will die of terrible diseases, and no one will cry for them or bury them. Their bodies will lie on the ground like dung. They will die in war, or they will starve to death. Their bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals.”
“This is what the Lord God says: My plans for Jerusalem are much worse! I will send my four terrible punishments against it—war, hunger, wild animals, and disease—to destroy its people and animals.
I will send a time of hunger and wild animals against you, and they will kill your children. Disease and death will sweep through your people, and I will bring the sword against you to kill you. I, the Lord, have spoken.”
I will send wild animals to attack you, and they will take your children away from you and destroy your cattle. They will make you so few in number the roads will be empty.
If they hide at the top of Mount Carmel, I will find them and take them away. If they try to hide from me at the bottom of the sea, I will command a snake to bite them.
They will crawl in the dust like a snake, like insects crawling on the ground. They will come trembling from their holes to the Lord our God and will turn in fear before you.
so you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, naked, and poor, and the Lord will put a load on you until he has destroyed you.
Your enemy will surround you. Those people will make you starve so that you will eat your own babies, the bodies of the sons and daughters the Lord your God gave you.