I haven't run away from being your shepherd, and I haven't longed for the day of sickness. You know what comes out from my lips, it's open before you.

"This is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies says: "Look, disaster is going from nation to nation, a great storm is being stirred up from the most distant parts of the earth.

For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, "plans for well-being, and not for calamity, in order to give you a future and a hope.

Lord, you have told me, "Buy the field for yourself with money and call in witnesses," even though the city is being given over to the Chaldeans.'"

"Now therefore," says the LORD God of Israel, "concerning this city about which you are saying, "It is being given into the control of the king of Babylon by sword, famine, and plague,'

Then the officials told the king, "Let this man be put to death because he's undermining the efforts of the soldiers who remain in this city and that of all the people by speaking words like these to them. Indeed, this man is not seeking the well-being of this people, but rather their harm."

This is the message that came to Jeremiah from the LORD after Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had released him from Ramah, when he was bound in chains, along with all the exiles from Jerusalem and Judah who were being taken into exile in Babylon.

Just like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighbors," says the LORD, "no one will live there. No human being will reside in it.

"Hazor will become a dwelling place for jackals, a perpetual wasteland. No one will live there; no human being will reside in it."

Just as when God overthrew Sodom, Gomorrah, and their neighbors," declares the LORD, "so also no one will live there. No human being will reside in it.

Her cities will become an object of horror, a dry land and a desert, a land in which no one lives, and through which no human being passes.