I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab, and I will utterly wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish—wiping it and turning it upside down.
People will go into the caves of the rocks and into the holes of the earth, because of the fear of Adonai and the splendor of His majesty, when He arises to shake the earth.
Your perversity! Should the potter be regarded the same as the clay? Should the thing made say to its maker, “You did not make me”? Or the thing formed say of its former, “You have no understanding?”
Every stroke of His punishing rod that Adonai brings down on him —with tambourines and harps, and battles brandishing His arm— He will fight against them.
It will not be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation it will lay waste—forever and ever none will pass through it.
A lion has come up from his thicket— a destroyer of nations has set out. He has left his place to make your land a wasteland. Your cities will lie in ruins, without inhabitant.
Then Johanan son of Kareah spoke privately to Gedaliah at Mizpah, saying, “Let me go now, and I will slay Ishmael son of Nethaniah, and no one will know it. Why should he take your life, so that all the Jews that are gathered to you would be scattered, and the remnant of Judah perish?’
Israel is a scattered flock— lions have driven them away. First, Assyria’s king devoured him. This last one who broke his bones was King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me, crushed me, set me aside like an empty dish, swallowed me up like a dragon, filled his belly with my delicacies, rinsed me away.”
A third you will burn in fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are complete. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. Scatter a third to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.
I will stretch out My hand over them and make the land desolate and waste, more than the wilderness of Diblah, wherever they live. Then they will know that I am Adonai.”
In all your dwellings the cities will be desolate. The high places will be deserted. Your altars will be laid waste and made desolate, your idols broken and destroyed, your sun pillars cut down and your works blotted out.
They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led away captive into all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
When they did not find them, they instead began dragging Jason and some of the brethren before the city officials, shouting, “These men who have upset the world have come here too,
“Adonai will scatter you among all peoples from the one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other gods—wood and stone—that you and your fathers have not known.