Alas, what a terrible time of trouble it is! There has never been any like it. It is a time of trouble for the descendants of Jacob, but some of them will be rescued out of it.

Get out of Babylonia quickly, you foreign people. Flee to save your lives. Do not let yourselves be killed because of her sins. For it is time for the Lord to wreak his revenge. He will pay Babylonia back for what she has done.

The people of those nations are both stupid and foolish. Instruction from a wooden idol is worthless!

The human mind is more deceitful than anything else. It is incurably bad. Who can understand it?

In the seventh month of that very same year the prophet Hananiah died.

“Israel is not a slave, is he? He was not born into slavery, was he? If not, why then is he being carried off?

But I will completely uproot and destroy any of those nations that will not pay heed,’” says the Lord.

He upheld the cause of the poor and needy. So things went well for Judah.’ The Lord says, ‘That is a good example of what it means to know me.’

The Lord spoke to Jeremiah a second time while he was still confined in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

In those days and at that time I will raise up for them a righteous descendant of David. “‘He will do what is just and right in the land.

King Zedekiah said to them, “Very well, you can do what you want with him. For I cannot do anything to stop you.”

“Moab has vaunted itself against me. So make him drunk with the wine of my wrath until he splashes around in his own vomit, until others treat him as a laughingstock.

So her young men will fall in her city squares. All her soldiers will be destroyed at that time,” says the Lord.

A drought will come upon her land; her rivers and canals will be dried up. All of this will happen because her land is filled with idols. Her people act like madmen because of those idols they fear.

The Lord says, “Listen, nation of Israel! I am about to bring a nation from far away to attack you. It will be a nation that was founded long ago and has lasted for a long time. It will be a nation whose language you will not know. Its people will speak words that you will not be able to understand.

“When this happens,” says the Lord, “the king and his officials will lose their courage. The priests will be struck with horror, and the prophets will be speechless in astonishment.”

“At that time the people of Judah and Jerusalem will be told, ‘A scorching wind will sweep down from the hilltops in the desert on my dear people. It will not be a gentle breeze for winnowing the grain and blowing away the chaff.

“These people have denied what the Lord says. They have said, ‘That is not so! No harm will come to us. We will not experience war and famine.

All of this is because the Lord who rules over all has said: ‘Cut down the trees around Jerusalem and build up a siege ramp against its walls. This is the city which is to be punished. Nothing but oppression happens in it.

For the religion of these people is worthless. They cut down a tree in the forest, and a craftsman makes it into an idol with his tools.