2 Chronicles 36:17

⁷Since the days of our fathers we have been exceedingly guilty to this day; and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to confusion of face, as it is this day.

²⁰Honor your covenant, for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the earth.

³and the LORD has brought it, and done according as he spoke. Because you have sinned against the LORD, and have not obeyed his voice, therefore this thing has come on you.

⁵To the others he said in my hearing, “Go through the city after him, and strike. Don’t let your eye spare, neither have pity. ⁶Kill utterly the old man, the young man, the virgin, little children and women; but don’t come near any man on whom is the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.” Then they began at the old men who were before the house.

⁷He said to them, “Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!” They went out, and struck in the city.

²The LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldeans, bands of the Syrians, bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the LORD’s word which he spoke by his servants the prophets. ³Surely at the commandment of the LORD this came on Judah, to remove them out of his sight for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did,

¹⁵But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. You have grown fat. You have grown thick. You have become sleek. Then he abandoned God who made him, and rejected the Rock of his salvation. ¹⁶They moved him to jealousy with strange gods. They provoked him to anger with abominations. ¹⁷They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods that they didn’t know, to new gods that came up recently, which your fathers didn’t dread. ¹⁸Of the Rock who became your father, you are unmindful, and have forgotten God who gave you birth. ¹⁹The LORD saw and abhorred, because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters. ²⁰He said, “I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end will be; for they are a very perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. ²¹They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. ²²For a fire is kindled in my anger, that burns to the lowest Sheol,devours ^[+] the earth with its increase, and sets the foundations of the mountains on fire. ²³“I will heap evils on them. I will spend my arrows on them. ²⁴They shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and bitter destruction. I will send the teeth of animals on them, with the venom of vipers that glide in the dust. ²⁵Outside the sword will bereave, and in the rooms, terror on both young man and virgin, the nursing infant with the gray-haired man. ²⁶I said that I would scatter them afar. I would make their memory to cease from among men; ²⁷were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, lest their adversaries should judge wrongly, lest they should say, ‘Our hand is exalted; the LORD has not done all this.’” ²⁸For they are a nation void of counsel. There is no understanding in them.

¹⁸I declare to you today that you will surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you pass over the Jordan to go in to possess it.

¹⁴“‘But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments, ¹⁵and if you shall reject my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, ¹⁶I also will do this to you: I will appoint terror over you, even consumption and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and make the soul to pine away. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it. ¹⁷I will set my face against you, and you will be struck before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you; and you will flee when no one pursues you.

¹⁸“‘If you in spite of these things will not listen to me, then I will chastise you seven times more for your sins. ¹⁹I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your sky like iron, and your soil like bronze. ²⁰Your strength will be spent in vain; for your land won’t yield its increase, neither will the trees of the land yield their fruit.

²¹“‘If you walk contrary to me, and won’t listen to me, then I will bring seven times more plagues on you according to your sins. ²²I will send the wild animals among you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number. Your roads will become desolate.

²³“‘If by these things you won’t be turned back to me, but will walk contrary to me, ²⁴then I will also walk contrary to you; and I will strike you, even I, seven times for your sins. ²⁵I will bring a sword upon you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant. You will be gathered together within your cities, and I will send the pestilence among you. You will be delivered into the hand of the enemy. ²⁶When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight. You shall eat, and not be satisfied.

²⁷“‘If you in spite of this won’t listen to me, but walk contrary to me, ²⁸then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. I will also chastise you seven times for your sins. ²⁹You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you. ³¹I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation. I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your offerings. ³²I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it will be astonished at it. ³³I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. ³⁴Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. ³⁵As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn’t have in your Sabbaths when you lived on it.

³⁶“‘As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword. They will fall when no one pursues. ³⁷They will stumble over one another, as it were before the sword, when no one pursues. You will have no power to stand before your enemies. ³⁸You will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will eat you up. ³⁹Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers they shall pine away with them.

⁴⁰“‘If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me; and also that because they walked contrary to me, ⁴¹I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity, ⁴²then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land. ⁴³The land also will be left by them, and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they will accept the punishment of their iniquity because they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes. ⁴⁴Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly and to break my covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God. ⁴⁵But I will for their sake remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.’”

⁴⁶These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by Moses.

¹⁶The LORD said to Moses, “Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers. This people will rise up and play the prostitute after the strange gods of the land where they go to be among them, and will forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them. ¹⁷Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall come on them; so that they will say in that day, ‘Haven’t these evils come on us because our God is not among us?’ ¹⁸I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evil which they have done, in that they have turned to other gods.

²¹Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and give them over to the power of the sword. Let their wives become childless and widows. Let their men be killed and their young men struck by the sword in battle.