Listen! News is coming even now. The rumble of a great army is heard approaching from a land in the north. It is coming to turn the towns of Judah into rubble, places where only jackals live.

Tell them that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Anyone who does not keep the terms of the covenant will be under a curse.

For I solemnly warned your ancestors to obey me. I warned them again and again, ever since I delivered them out of Egypt until this very day.

So I said to the Lord, “O Lord who rules over all, you are a just judge! You examine people’s hearts and minds. I want to see you pay them back for what they have done because I trust you to vindicate my cause.”

Then the Lord told me about some men from Anathoth who were threatening to kill me. They had threatened, “Stop prophesying in the name of the Lord or we will kill you!”

“Take the shorts that you bought and are wearing and go at once to Perath. Bury the shorts there in a crack in the rocks.”

Many days later the Lord said to me, “Go at once to Perath and get the shorts I ordered you to bury there.”

So I went to Perath and dug up the shorts from the place where I had buried them. I found that they were ruined; they were good for nothing.

What will you say when the Lord appoints as rulers over you those allies that you, yourself, had actually prepared as such? Then anguish and agony will grip you like that of a woman giving birth to a baby.

The Lord said, “Jerusalem, I will surely send you away for your own good. I will surely bring the enemy upon you in a time of trouble and distress.

No one will take any food to those who mourn for the dead to comfort them. No one will give them any wine to drink to console them for the loss of their father or mother.

Yet I, the Lord, say: “A new time will certainly come. People now affirm their oaths with ‘I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt.’

You are the one in whom Israel may find hope. All who leave you will suffer shame. Those who turn away from you will be consigned to the nether world. For they have rejected you, the Lord, the fountain of life.

But if that nation does what displeases me and does not obey me, then I will cancel the good I promised to do to it.

Should good be paid back with evil? Yet they are virtually digging a pit to kill me. Just remember how I stood before you pleading on their behalf to keep you from venting your anger on them.

Go out to the part of the Hinnom Valley which is near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Announce there what I tell you.

I will make this city an object of horror, a thing to be hissed at. All who pass by it will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn because of all the disasters that have happened to it.

O Lord who rules over all, you test and prove the righteous. You see into people’s hearts and minds. Pay them back for what they have done because I trust you to vindicate my cause.

Cursed be the man who made my father very glad when he brought him the news that a baby boy had been born to him!

But, if you do not obey these commands, I solemnly swear that this palace will become a pile of rubble. I, the Lord, affirm it!”