“‘But I will spare some of you. Some will escape the sword when you are scattered in foreign lands. ¹ 

On that day a fugitive will come to you to report the news. ¹ 

Their survivors will escape to the mountains and become like doves of the valleys; all of them will moan – each one for his iniquity.

On that day you will be able to speak again; ¹  you will talk with the fugitive and be silent no longer. You will be an object lesson for them, and they will know that I am the Lord.”

In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month, on the fifth of the month, ¹  a refugee came to me from Jerusalem ²  saying, “The city has been defeated!” ³ 

Then your survivors will remember me among the nations where they are exiled. They will realize ¹  how I was crushed by their unfaithful ²  heart which turned from me and by their eyes which lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves ³  because of the evil they have done and because of all their abominable practices.

Now the hand of the Lord had been on me ¹  the evening before the refugee reached me, but the Lord ²  opened my mouth by the time the refugee arrived ³  in the morning; he opened my mouth and I was no longer unable to speak. ⁴