I will bring terror on you from every side,” says the Lord God who rules over all. ¹  “You will be scattered in every direction. ²  No one will gather the fugitives back together.

I am as full of anger as you are, Lord, ¹  I am tired of trying to hold it in.” The Lord answered, ²  “Vent it, then, ³  on the children who play in the street and on the young men who are gathered together. Husbands and wives are to be included, ⁴  as well as the old and those who are advanced in years.

Gather your belongings together and prepare to leave the land, you people of Jerusalem ¹  who are being besieged. ² 

“Do so because my people have committed a double wrong: they have rejected me, the fountain of life-giving water, ¹  and they have dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns which cannot even hold water.”

For the religion ¹  of these people is worthless. They cut down a tree in the forest, and a craftsman makes it into an idol with his tools. ² 

Then heaven and earth and all that is in them will sing for joy over Babylon. For destroyers from the north will attack it,” says the Lord. ¹ 

The king of Babylon ordered them to be executed ¹  at Riblah in the territory of Hamath. So Judah was taken into exile away from its land.

Egypt is like a beautiful young cow. But northern armies will attack her like swarms of stinging flies. ¹ 

For the Lord says, “Look! Like an eagle with outspread wings a nation will swoop down on Moab. ¹ 

Why do you complain about your injuries, that your pain is incurable? I have done all this to you because your wickedness is so great and your sin is so much.

But in that time they will affirm them with ‘I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel from the land of the north and from all the other lands where he had banished them.’ At that time I will bring them back to the land I gave their ancestors.” ¹ 

In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, on the twenty-fifth ¹  day of the twelfth month, ²  Evil-Merodach, in the first year of his reign, pardoned ³  King Jehoiachin of Judah and released him from prison.

They broke through the city walls, and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night. They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden. ¹  (The Babylonians had the city surrounded.) Then they headed for the Jordan Valley. ² 

Know for certain that ¹  I hereby give you the authority to announce to nations and kingdoms that they will be ²  uprooted and torn down, destroyed and demolished, rebuilt and firmly planted.” ³ 

The people I call my own ¹  have turned on me like a lion ²  in the forest. They have roared defiantly ³  at me. So I will treat them as though I hate them. ⁴ 

But the next day Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks. When he did, Jeremiah said to him, “The Lord’s name for you is not ‘Pashhur’ but ‘Terror is Everywhere.’ ¹ 

I will force you and your mother who gave you birth into exile. You will be exiled to ¹  a country where neither of you were born, and you will both die there.

But just watch! ¹  The wrath of the Lord will come like a storm! ²  Like a raging storm it will rage down ³  on the heads of those who are wicked.

Just watch! The wrath of the Lord will come like a storm. Like a raging storm it will rage down on the heads of those who are wicked.

At that time ¹  the nation of Judah and the nation of Israel will be reunited. ²  Together they will come back from a land in the north to the land that I gave to your ancestors as a permanent possession. ” ³