“The Lord has rejected all my mighty men inside my walls. He brought an army against me to destroy my young men. As if in a winepress, the Lord has crushed the capital city of Judah.
“Who caused the one to come from the east? Who gives him victories everywhere he goes? The one who brought him gives nations over to him and defeats kings. He uses his sword, and kings become like dust. He uses his bow, and they are blown away like chaff.
Now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will remove the hedge, and it will be burned. I will break down the stone wall, and it will be walked on.
The Lord answers, “I have walked in the winepress alone, and no one among the nations helped me. I was angry and walked on the nations and crushed them because of my anger. Blood splashed on my clothes, and I stained all my clothing.
“Jeremiah, speak this message to the people of Judah: ‘Let my eyes be filled with tears night and day, without stopping. My people have received a terrible blow; they have been hurt badly.
So now, let their children starve, and let their enemies kill them with swords. Let their wives lose their children and husbands. Let the men from Judah be put to death and the young men be killed with swords in battle.
Even if you defeated all of the Babylonian army that is attacking you and there were only a few injured men left in their tents, they would come from their tents and burn down Jerusalem!”
Come against Babylon from far away. Break open her storehouses of grain. Pile up her dead bodies like heaps of grain. Completely destroy Babylon and do not leave anyone alive.
“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has defeated and destroyed us. In the past he took our people away, and we became like an empty jar. He was like a giant snake that swallowed us. He filled his stomach with our best things. Then he spit us out.
But I am full of the anger of the Lord, and I am tired of holding it in. “Pour out my anger on the children who play in the street and on the young men gathered together. A husband and his wife will both be caught in his anger, as will the very old.
“People young and old lie outside on the ground. My young women and young men have been killed by the sword. You killed them on the day of your anger; you killed them without mercy.
Swing the cutting tool, because the harvest is ripe. Come, walk on them as you would walk on grapes to get their juice, because the winepress is full and the barrels are spilling over, because these people are so evil!”
Then my enemies will see this, and they will be ashamed, those who said to me, ‘Where is the Lord your God?’ I will look down on them. They will get walked on, like mud in the street.”
So what do you think should be done to those who do not respect the Son of God, who look at the blood of the agreement that made them holy as no different from others’ blood, who insult the Spirit of God’s grace? Surely they should have a much worse punishment.
Out of the rider’s mouth comes a sharp sword that he will use to defeat the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will crush out the wine in the winepress of the terrible anger of God the Almighty.
In the same year those people destroyed the Israelites who lived east of the Jordan River in the region of Gilead, where the Amorites lived. So the Israelites suffered for eighteen years.