Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorites in front of them, though their height seemed like a cedar, though their strength seemed like an oak, but whose fruit I destroyed from above and the roots from beneath.

"I overthrew your cities, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You've become like a burning ember, snatched from the fire, but you have not returned to me," declares the LORD.

"Seek the LORD and live! Otherwise, he may break out like a fire in the house of Joseph and devour Bethel, and there will be no one to extinguish it.

It is he who is raining sudden destruction upon the strong like lightning, so that ruin comes upon the fortress.

It will be like a man who runs from a lion, only to encounter a bear; or who comes home, leans his hand against a wall, and a serpent bites him!

"But let justice roll on like many waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing river.

Surely the land will tremble because of this, won't it? And all who live in it will mourn, won't they? The entire land will swell up like a flooded river. It will be stirred up and then will sink like the river of Egypt.

I will turn your festivals into mourning, and all of your songs to dirges. I will cause all of you to put on sackcloth and to shave all of your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son, and its conclusion will be like the end of a bitter day."

"The Lord GOD of the Heavenly Armies who is touching the earth so that it melts and all of its inhabitants mourn there the land rises like the Nile River, but sinks like the river of Egypt

"Aren't you people of Israel like the people of Cush to me?" declares the LORD. "I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, did I not, as well as the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?