The LORD told me, "You have observed well, because I'm watching over my message, to make sure it comes about."

Then the Lord said to me, Out of the north evil will come, bursting out on all the people of the land.

For, look, I [am] calling to all [the] clans of [the] kingdoms of [the] north," {declares} Yahweh, "and they will come and set each one his throne [at] the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all its surrounding walls, and against all the cities of Judah.

Israel was holiness unto Jehovah, the first-fruits of his increase: all that devour him are guilty; evil shall come upon them, saith Jehovah.

Yea, I bring you in to a land of fruitful fields, To eat its fruit and its goodness, And ye come in and defile My land, And Mine inheritance have made an abomination.

Has not this come on you because you have given up the Lord your God, who was your guide by the way?

Like as a thief that is taken with the deed cometh to shame, even so is the house of Israel come to confusion: the common people, their kings and rulers, their priests and prophets.

They say to a wooden idol, 'You are my father.' They say to a stone image, 'You gave birth to me.' Yes, they have turned away from me instead of turning to me. Yet when they are in trouble, they say, 'Come and save us!'

But where are the gods you have made for yourselves? let them come, if they are able to give you salvation in the time of your trouble: for the number of your gods is as the number of your towns, O Judah.

O generation, you see the word of Yahweh. Have I been a desert to Israel? Or a land of great darkness? Why do my people say, 'We roam about freely, we will not come again to you'?

Yet darest thou say, 'I am guiltless: Tush, his wrath cannot come upon me.' Behold, I will reason with thee because thou darest say, 'I have not offended.'

Also from there you will come out with your hands on your head, for Yahweh has rejected {those in whom you trust}, and you will not prosper through them.

They say, If a man puts away his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's, will he go back to her again? will not that land have been made unclean? but though you have been acting like a loose woman with a number of lovers, will you now come back to me? says the Lord.

Therefore rain showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come. Yet {you have} [the] forehead of a woman prostitute, you refuse to be ashamed.

And I said, After she has done all these things she will come back to me; but she did not. And her false sister Judah saw it.

And it hath come to pass, from the vileness of her fornication, that the land is defiled, and she committeth fornication with stone and with wood.

But for all this, her false sister Judah has not come back to me with all her heart, but with deceit, says the Lord.

Go, and give out these words to the north, and say, Come back, O Israel, though you have been turned away from me, says the Lord; my face will not be against you in wrath: for I am full of mercy, says the Lord, I will not be angry for ever.

Come back, O children who are turned away, says the Lord; for I am a husband to you, and I will take you, one from a town and two from a family, and will make you come to Zion;

And it will be when you have multiplied and become fruitful in the land in those days," {declares} Yahweh, "they will no longer say, 'The ark of the covenant of Yahweh.' And {it will not come to mind}, nor will they remember it, nor will they miss [it], nor will it be made again.

At that time Jerusalem will be named the seat of the Lord's kingdom; and all the nations will come together to it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem: and no longer will their steps be guided by the purposes of their evil hearts.

In those days the house of Judah will walk along with the house of Israel and they will come together from [the] land of [the] north to the land that I gave as an inheritance [to] your ancestors.

Return, apostate children, I will heal your backsliding. 'Look, we come to you, for you are Yahweh our God.

Surely, an illusion [comes] from [the] hills, [the] turmoil [on] the mountains. Surely, in Yahweh our God [is] the salvation of Israel.

If you will come back, O Israel, says the Lord, you will come back to me: and if you will put away your disgusting ways, you will not be sent away from before me.

Circumcise yourselves for Jehovah, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my fury come forth like fire and burn, and there be none to quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

Say openly in Judah, give it out in Jerusalem, and say, Let the horn be sounded in the land: crying out in a loud voice, Come together, and let us go into the walled towns.

The lion is come up from his thicket, the destroyer of the nations is on his way; he is gone forth from his place, to make thy land desolate; thy cities shall be laid waste, without inhabitant.

And it shall come to pass at that day, saith Jehovah, that the heart of the king shall perish, and the heart of the princes; and the priests shall be astonished, and the prophets shall wonder.

Then said I, Ah, Lord God! your words were not true when you said to this people and to Jerusalem, You will have peace; when the sword has come even to the soul.

“At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, ‘A searing wind blows from the barren heights in the wilderness on the way to My dear people. It comes not to winnow or to sift;

{a wind too strong for} these will come for me, now also I speak judgments against them."

Look, he comes up like the clouds, and his chariots [are] like the whirlwind, his horses are swifter than eagles, woe to us, for we are devastated.

make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah.

As the keepers of a field, have they come against her round about, - For against me, hath she rebelled, Declareth Yahweh.

Your ways and your doings have made these things come on you; this is your sin; truly it is bitter, going deep into your heart.

My soul, my soul! I am pained to my inmost heart; my heart is troubled in me; I am not able to be quiet, because the sound of the horn, the note of war, has come to my ears.

News of one [terrible] disaster comes close after another,
For the whole land is devastated;
Suddenly my tents are spoiled and destroyed,
My [tent] curtains [ruined] in a moment.

"Nevertheless this shall come upon them because my people is become foolish, and hath utterly no understanding. They are the children of foolishness, and without any discretion. To do evil, they have wit enough: but to do well, they have no wisdom."

From the voice of the horseman, And of him shooting with the bow, all the city is fleeing, They have come into thickets, And on cliffs they have gone up, All the city is forsaken, And there is no one dwelling in them.

A voice has come to my ears like the voice of a woman in birth-pains, the pain of one giving birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, fighting for breath, stretching out her hands, saying, Now sorrow is mine! for my strength is gone from me before the takers of life.

O Lord, do not your eyes see good faith? you have given them punishment, but they were not troubled; you have sent destruction on them, but they did not take your teaching to heart: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they would not come back.

Wherefore a lion out of the wood shall hurt them, and a wolf in the evening shall destroy them. The cat of the mountain shall lie lurking by their cities, to tare in pieces all them that come thereout. For their offenses are many, and their departing away is great.

"They have denied Yahweh, and have said, 'Not he, {for} evil will not come on us, we will see neither sword nor famine.

“The prophets are like the wind [their prophecy will not come to pass],
And the word [of God] is not in them.
In this manner it will be done to them [as they prophesied, not to us].”

And it shall come to pass, when ye shall say, Wherefore hath Jehovah our God done all these things unto us? then shalt thou say unto them, Like as ye have forsaken me, and served foreign gods in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land that is not yours.

A wonderful and horrible thing is come to pass in the land:

The prophets prophesy {falsely}, and the priests rule {by their own authority}, and my people love [it] so much. But what will you do {when the end comes}?

Come out of Jerusalem, ye strong children of Benjamin! Blow up the trumpets ye Tekoites, set up a token unto Bethhaccherem; for a plague and a great misery peepeth out from the North.

I will liken the daughter of Zion to a fair and tender woman, and to her shall come the shepherds with their flocks.

Shepherds and their flocks will come against her, they will pitch [their] tents against her all around, they will pasture, each his {portion}.

They will say, 'Prepare to do battle against it! Come on! Let's attack it at noon!' But later they will say, 'Oh, oh! Too bad! The day is almost over and the shadows of evening are getting long.

So come on, let's go ahead and attack it by night and destroy all its fortified buildings.'

Let them be put to shame because they have done disgusting things. They had no shame, they were not able to become red with shame: so they will come down with those who are falling: when my punishment comes on them, they will be made low, says the Lord.

Give ear, O earth: see, I will make evil come on this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not given attention to my words, and they would have nothing to do with my law.

What [is] this to me? Frankincense comes from Sheba, and the precious spice reed from a distant land. Your burnt offerings [are] not {acceptable}, your sacrifices are not pleasing to me."

For this reason the Lord has said, See, I will put stones in the way of this people: and the fathers and the sons together will go falling over them; the neighbour and his friend will come to destruction.

Thus says the LORD, Behold, a people comes from the north country, and a great nation shall be raised from the ends of the earth.

The news of it has come to our ears; our hands have become feeble: trouble has come on us and pain, like the pain of a woman in childbirth.

No man go forth into the field, no man come upon the high street: for the sword and fear of the enemy shall be on every side!"

O daughter of my people, gird yourself [with] sackcloth, and roll about in the ashes in mourning, a mourning ceremony [as for] an only child. Make for yourself wailing of bitterness, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.

Take your place in the doorway of the Lord's house, and give out this word there, and say, Give ear to the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who come inside these doors to give worship to the Lord.

And then you come and you stand {before} me in this house, which is called {by my name}, and you say, 'we are safe {to go on doing} all of these detestable things.'

And they built the high place of Topheth, which [is] in [the] Valley of Ben Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I have not commanded, and it did not come into my mind.

Therefore look, days [are] about to come," {declares} Yahweh, "and it will no longer be called Topheth or [the] Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of the Slaughter, and they will bury in Topheth {until there is no more place}.

The Lord says, "When that time comes, the bones of the kings of Judah and its leaders, the bones of the priests and prophets and of all the other people who lived in Jerusalem will be dug up from their graves.

Further, you are to say to them, This is what the Lord has said: Will those who are falling not be lifted up again? will he who has gone away not come back?

Why do these people of Jerusalem go back, for ever turning away? they will not give up their deceit, they will not come back.

Let them be put to shame because they have done disgusting things. They had no shame, they were not able to become red with shame: so they will come down with those who are falling: in the time of their punishment they will be made low, says the Lord.

Why are we seated doing nothing? come together, and let us go to the walled towns, and let destruction overtake us there, for the Lord our God has sent destruction on us, and given us bitter water for our drink, because we have done evil against the Lord.

We hoped for good fortune, but nothing good has come of it. We hoped for a time of relief, but instead we experience terror.

"From Dan is heard the snorting of their horses, from the sound of the neighing of their stallions all the land quakes, for they come and devour the land, and that which fills [the] city, and [those who] live in it.

Sorrow has come on me! my heart in me is feeble.

The voice of the cry of the daughter of my people comes from a far land: Is the Lord not in Zion? is not her King in her? Why have they made me angry with their images and their strange gods which are no gods?

[The] harvest has passed, [the] summer has come to an end, and we have not received help.

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
So why has the healing of my dear people
not come about?

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Everyone will make sport of his neighbour with deceit, not saying what is true: their tongues have been trained to say false words; they are twisted, hating to come back.

Their tongues are like deadly arrows. They are always telling lies. Friendly words for their neighbors come from their mouths. But their minds are thinking up ways to trap them.

Who is the wise man able to see this? who is he to whom the word of the Lord has come, so that he may make it clear? why is the land given to destruction and burned up like a waste place, so that no one goes through?

Thus says Yahweh of hosts: "Consider closely, and call for the wailing women, so that they come, and for the skillful women, so that they come.

Let them come quickly to raise a lament over us
so that our eyes may overflow with tears,
our eyelids soaked with weeping.

For a sound of weeping goes up from Zion, a cry, How has destruction come on us? we are overcome with shame because we have gone away from our land; he has sent us out from our house.

For death has come into our windows, it has entered into our fortresses, to cut off [the] children from [the] streets, [the] young men from [the] public squares.

Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will punish all them that are circumcised in their uncircumcision:

That is, I will punish the Egyptians, the Judeans, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and all the desert people who cut their hair short at the temples. I will do so because none of the people of those nations are really circumcised in the Lord's sight. Moreover, none of the people of Israel are circumcised when it comes to their hearts."

Who shall not fear thee, thou king of the nations? for to thee he shall come: for among all the wise of the nations, and among all their kings, from none like thee.

At the voice He giveth forth, A multitude of waters is in the heavens, And He causeth vapours to come up from the end of the earth, Lightnings for rain He hath made, And bringeth out wind from His treasures.

They are worthless, mere objects to be mocked. When the time comes to punish them, they will be destroyed.

Behold, the noise of the report has come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of jackals.

and will keep my promise, that I have sworn unto your fathers: Namely, that I would give them a land which floweth with milk and honey, as ye see it is come to pass unto this day." Then answered I, and said, "Amen. It is even so, O LORD, as thou sayest."

For though I, the Lord who rules over all, planted you in the land, I now decree that disaster will come on you because the nations of Israel and Judah have done evil and have made me angry by offering sacrifices to the god Baal."

But I was like a gentle lamb taken to be put to death; I had no thought that they were designing evil against me, saying, Come and let us make trouble his food, cutting him off from the land of the living, so that there may be no more memory of his name.

But, O Lord of armies, judging in righteousness, testing the thoughts and the heart, let me see your punishment come on them: for I have put my cause before you.

So the Lord of armies has said, See, I will send punishment on them: the young men will be put to the sword; their sons and their daughters will come to death through need of food:

“My inheritance has become to Me
Like a lion in the forest;
She has roared against Me;
Therefore I have come to hate her.

The lair of [the] hyena [is] my inheritance to me, the birds of prey [are] all around her. Go, gather all of the animals of the field, bring [them] {to come and devour}.

Upon all [the] barren heights in the desert destroyers have come, for [the] sword of Yahweh devours, from [one] end of [the] land to the [other] end of the land, there is no peace for all flesh.

And it shall come to pass, after that I have plucked them up, I will return and have compassion on them; and I will bring them again, every man to his heritage, and every man to his land.

And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, As Jehovah liveth; even as they taught my people to swear by Baal; then shall they be built up in the midst of my people.

Thus said Jehovah to me, Go buy for thee a girdle of linen, and put it upon thy loins, and thou shalt not cause it to come into water.