You will probably ask yourself, 'Why have these things happened to me? Why have I been treated like a disgraced adulteress whose skirt has been torn off and her limbs exposed?' It is because you have sinned so much.

The person who gathers wealth by unjust means is like the partridge that broods over eggs but does not hatch them. Before his life is half over he will lose his ill-gotten gains. At the end of his life it will be clear he was a fool."

I, the Lord, affirm that I know how arrogant they are. But their pride is ill-founded. Their boastings will prove to be false.

Yet in days to come I will reverse Moab's ill fortune." says the Lord. The judgment against Moab ends here.

Yet in days to come I will reverse Ammon's ill fortune." says the Lord.

"Yet in days to come I will reverse Elam's ill fortune." says the Lord.

For the honor of your name, do not treat Jerusalem with contempt. Do not treat with disdain the place where your glorious throne sits. Be mindful of your covenant with us. Do not break it!

You must change the way you have been living and do what is right. You must treat one another fairly.

"I thought to myself, 'Oh what a joy it would be for me to treat you like a son! What a joy it would be for me to give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful piece of property there is in all the world!' I thought you would call me, 'Father' and would never cease being loyal to me.

"'Sure to be judged is the king who builds his palace using injustice and treats people unfairly while adding its upper rooms. He makes his countrymen work for him for nothing. He does not pay them for their labor.

The Lord who rules over all says, 'I will bring war, starvation, and disease on them. I will treat them like figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten.

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

I said, "Oh, mother, how I regret that you ever gave birth to me! I am always starting arguments and quarrels with the people of this land. I have not lent money to anyone and I have not borrowed from anyone. Yet all of these people are treating me with contempt."

And all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon will use them as examples when they put a curse on anyone. They will say, "May the Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab whom the king of Babylon roasted to death in the fire!"

"Moab has vaunted itself against me. So make him drunk with the wine of my wrath until he splashes around in his own vomit, until others treat him as a laughingstock.