I will scatter them through other nations that they and their ancestors never knew about. I will chase the people of Judah with the sword until they are all killed.”
You will fear high places and will be afraid to go for a walk. Your hair will become white like the flowers on an almond tree. You will limp along like a grasshopper when you walk. Your appetite will be gone. Then you will go to your everlasting home, and people will go to your funeral.
I will send war, hunger, and disease against them. I will attack them until they have all been killed. Then they will no longer be in the land I gave to them and their ancestors.’ ”
“Then say to them, ‘This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: Drink this cup of my anger. Get drunk from it and vomit. Fall down and don’t get up because of the war I am sending among you!’
The Lord All-Powerful says: “I will soon send war, hunger, and terrible diseases against those still in Jerusalem. I will make them like bad figs that are too rotten to eat.
I am watching over them, not to take care of them, but to hurt them. The Jews who live in Egypt will die from swords or hunger until they are all destroyed.
“ ‘Cut off your hair and throw it away. Go up to the bare hilltop and cry out, because the Lord has rejected these people. He has turned his back on them, and in his anger will punish them.
Listen to the sound of my people. They cry from a faraway land: “Isn’t the Lord still in Jerusalem? Isn’t Jerusalem’s king still there?” But God says, “Why did the people make me angry by worshiping idols, useless foreign idols?”
“So say: ‘This is what the Lord God says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you together from the countries where you have been scattered. Then I will give you back the land of Israel.’
A third of you will die by disease or be destroyed by hunger inside your walls. A third will fall dead by the sword outside your walls. And a third I will scatter in every direction as I chase them with a sword.
Burn one-third with fire in the middle of the city when the days of the attack on Jerusalem are over. Then take one-third and cut it up with the knife all around the city. And scatter one-third to the wind. This is how I will chase them with a sword.
This is what the Lord, the Lord God All-Powerful, says: “People will be crying in all the streets; they will be saying, ‘Oh, no!’ in the public places. They will call the farmers to come and weep and will pay people to cry out loud for them.
At that time people will make fun of you and sing this sad song about you: ‘We are completely ruined; the Lord has taken away my people’s land. Yes, he has taken it away from me and divided our fields among our enemies!’ ”
‘I scattered them like a hurricane to other countries they did not know. This good land was left so ruined behind them that no one could live there. They had made the desired land a ruin.’ ”
The Lord will help your enemies defeat you. You will attack them from one direction, but you will run from them in seven directions. And you will become a thing of horror among all the kingdoms on earth.
Then the Lord will scatter you among the nations—from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve other gods of wood and stone, gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known.
The Lord will scatter you among the other nations. Only a few of you will be left alive, and those few will be in other nations where the Lord will send you.