O land of Judah, land of Judah, land of Judah! ¹  Listen to what the Lord has to say!

I brought you ¹  into a fertile land so you could enjoy ²  its fruits and its rich bounty. But when you entered my land, you defiled it; ³  you made the land I call my own ⁴  loathsome to me.

“Something horrible and shocking is going on in the land of Judah:

The noise of battle can be heard in the land of Babylonia. ¹  There is the sound of great destruction.

You will never come back to this land to which you will long to return!” ¹ 

The Lord spoke concerning Babylon and the land of Babylonia ¹  through the prophet Jeremiah. ² 

You kept the promise that you swore on oath to their ancestors. ¹  You gave them a land flowing with milk and honey. ² 

They did not ask: ‘Where is the Lord who delivered us out of Egypt, who brought us through the wilderness, through a land of desert sands and rift valleys, through a land of drought and deep darkness, ¹  through a land in which no one travels, and where no one lives?’ ² 

The Lord spoke to the prophet Jeremiah about Nebuchadnezzar coming to attack the land of Egypt. ¹ 

For the land is full of people unfaithful to him. ¹  They live wicked lives and they misuse their power. ²  So the land is dried up ³  because it is under his curse. ⁴  The pastures in the wilderness are withered.

So I will throw you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have ever known. There you must worship other gods day and night, for I will show you no mercy.’”

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 

the foreigners living in Egypt; ¹  all the kings of the land of Uz; ²  all the kings of the land of the Philistines, ³  the people of Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, the people who had been left alive from Ashdod; ⁴ 

Then the Lord said, “This means ¹  destruction will break out from the north on all who live in the land.

Cries of anguish will come from Babylon, the sound of great destruction from the land of the Babylonians.

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.

You and your people ¹  are saying that this land will become desolate, uninhabited by either people or animals. You are saying that it will be handed over to the Babylonians. ²  But fields ³  will again be bought in this land. ⁴ 

Some who survive in battle will return to the land of Judah from the land of Egypt. But they will be very few indeed! ¹  Then the Judean remnant who have come to live in the land of Egypt will know whose word proves true, ²  mine or theirs.’

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 

“You must not disobey the Lord your God by saying, ‘We will not stay in this land.’