"Look up to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been ravished? You have sat beside the road, waiting for them like a nomad in the desert. And you have polluted the land with your fornication and your wickedness.

"Beware of your neighbors, and don't trust any of your relatives. For all of your relatives act deceitfully, and every friend goes around as a slanderer.

Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field. They can't speak! They must always be carried because they can't walk! Don't be afraid of them because they can do no harm, nor can they do any good."

On all the barren heights in the desert destroyers will come. Indeed, a sword of the LORD will devour from one end of the land to the other. There will be no peace for any person.

Can any of the worthless gods of the nations make it rain? Can the heavens themselves bring forth showers? Aren't you the one who does this, LORD our God? So we hope in you, for you are the one who does all these things.

This is what the LORD says: "Be careful! On the Sabbath day, don't carry any load or bring anything through the gates of Jerusalem.

Don't bring any load out of your houses on the Sabbath day, nor are you to do any work. You are to consecrate the Sabbath day, just as I commanded your ancestors.

If you listen to me carefully," declares the LORD, "and don't bring a load through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, and you consecrate the Sabbath day and don't do any work on it,

But if you don't listen to me, to consecrate the Sabbath day and not carry any load as you enter the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I'll start a fire in its gates. It will consume the palaces of Jerusalem and won't be extinguished."'"

Oh how terrible! That time will be worse than any like it. It will be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be rescued from it.

All the officials and all the people who had entered into the covenant agreed that each would set his male and female slaves free so that they would not enslave them any longer. They obeyed and they released them.

But listen to this message from the LORD, all you people of Judah who are living in the land of Egypt. "Look, I've sworn by my great name', says the LORD, "my name will no longer be invoked by the mouth of any person in the entire land of Egypt, as he says, "As surely as the Lord GOD lives""

"Put salt on Moab for she will surely fall. Her towns will become desolate places, without any inhabitants in them.

Come to her from afar. Open up her barns. Pile her up like heaps of grain, and completely destroy her. Don't leave any survivors.