I will stretch out my hand against them, and wherever they live I will make the land a desolate waste, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they will know that I am the LORD.”
I am going to send for all the families of the north’— this is the LORD’s declaration—‘ and send for my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and I will bring them against this land, against its residents, and against all these surrounding nations, and I will completely destroy them and make them an example of horror and scorn, and ruins forever.I will eliminate the sound of joy and gladness from them— the voice of the groom and the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp.This whole land will become a desolate ruin, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.
All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown, producing nothing, with no plant growing on it, just like the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD demolished in his fierce anger.All the nations will ask,‘ Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this intense outburst of anger?’Then people will answer,‘ It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their ancestors, which he had made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.They began to serve other gods, bowing in worship to gods they had not known— gods that the LORD had not permitted them to worship.Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, and he brought every curse written in this book on it.The LORD uprooted them from their land in his anger, rage, and intense wrath, and threw them into another land where they are today.’
This fulfilled the word of the LORD through Jeremiah, and the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation until seventy years were fulfilled.
