2 Kings 22:16

¹¹Yes, all Israel have transgressed your law, turning aside, that they should not obey your voice. “Therefore the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses the servant of God has been poured out on us, for we have sinned against him.

¹²He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our judges who judged us, by bringing on us a great evil; for under the whole sky, such has not been done as has been done to Jerusalem. ¹³As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil has come on us. Yet we have not entreated the favor of the LORD our God, that we should turn from our iniquities and have discernment in your truth. ¹⁴Therefore the LORD has watched over the evil, and brought it on us; for the LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he does, and we have not obeyed his voice.

¹⁵It shall happen that as all the good things have come on you of which the LORD your God spoke to you, so the LORD will bring on you all the evil things, until he has destroyed you from off this good land which the LORD your God has given you,

¹⁵But it shall come to pass, if you will not listen to the LORD your God’s voice, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come on you and overtake you. ¹⁶You will be cursed in the city, and you will be cursed in the field. ¹⁷Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. ¹⁸The fruit of your body, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your livestock, and the young of your flock will be cursed. ¹⁹You will be cursed when you come in, and you will be cursed when you go out. ²⁰The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you put your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the evil of your doings, by which you have forsaken me. ²¹The LORD will make the pestilence cling to you, until he has consumed you from off the land where you go in to possess it. ²²The LORD will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with fiery heat, with the sword, with blight, and with mildew. They will pursue you until you perish. ²³Your sky that is over your head will be bronze, and the earth that is under you will be iron. ²⁴The LORD will make the rain of your land powder and dust. It will come down on you from the sky, until you are destroyed. ²⁵The LORD will cause you to be struck before your enemies. You will go out one way against them, and will flee seven ways before them. You will be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶Your dead bodies will be food to all birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth; and there will be no one to frighten them away. ²⁷The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with the tumors, with the scurvy, and with the itch, of which you can not be healed. ²⁸The LORD will strike you with madness, with blindness, and with astonishment of heart. ²⁹You will grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. You will only be oppressed and robbed always, and there will be no one to save you. ³⁰You will betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her. You will build a house, and you won’t dwell in it. You will plant a vineyard, and not use its fruit. ³¹Your ox will be slain before your eyes, and you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be violently taken away from before your face, and will not be restored to you. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to save you. ³²Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people. Your eyes will look and fail with longing for them all day long. There will be no power in your hand. ³³A nation which you don’t know will eat the fruit of your ground and all of your work. You will only be oppressed and crushed always, ³⁴so that the sights that you see with your eyes will drive you mad. ³⁵The LORD will strike you in the knees and in the legs with a sore boil, of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. ³⁶The LORD will bring you, and your king whom you will set over yourselves, to a nation that you have not known, you nor your fathers. There you will serve other gods of wood and stone. ³⁷You will become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away. ³⁸You will carry much seed out into the field, and will gather little in, for the locust will consume it. ³⁹You will plant vineyards and dress them, but you will neither drink of the wine, nor harvest, because worms will eat them. ⁴⁰You will have olive trees throughout all your borders, but you won’t anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off. ⁴¹You will father sons and daughters, but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. ⁴²Locusts will consume all of your trees and the fruit of your ground. ⁴³The foreigner who is among you will mount up above you higher and higher, and you will come down lower and lower. ⁴⁴He will lend to you, and you won’t lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail.

⁴⁵All these curses will come on you, and will pursue you and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you didn’t listen to the LORD your God’s voice, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you. ⁴⁶They will be for a sign and for a wonder to you and to your offspring forever. ⁴⁷Because you didn’t serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; ⁴⁸therefore you will serve your enemies whom the LORD sends against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in lack of all things. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. ⁴⁹The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flies: a nation whose language you will not understand, ⁵⁰a nation of fierce facial expressions, that doesn’t respect the elderly, nor show favor to the young. ⁵¹They will eat the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed. They also won’t leave you grain, new wine, oil, the increase of your livestock, or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. ⁵²They will besiege you in all your gates until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout all your land. They will besiege you in all your gates throughout all your land which the LORD your God has given you. ⁵³You will eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies will distress you. ⁵⁴The man who is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye will be evil toward his brother, toward the wife whom he loves, and toward the remnant of his children whom he has remaining, ⁵⁵so that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left to him, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy will distress you in all your gates. ⁵⁶The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye will be evil toward the husband that she loves, toward her son, toward her daughter, ⁵⁷toward her young one who comes out from between her feet, and toward her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of all things in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy will distress you in your gates. ⁵⁸If you will not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD^[+] your God, ⁵⁹then the LORD will make your plagues and the plagues of your offspring fearful, even great plagues, and of long duration, and severe sicknesses, and of long duration. ⁶⁰He will bring on you again all the diseases of Egypt, which you were afraid of; and they will cling to you. ⁶¹Also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this law, the LORD will bring them on you until you are destroyed. ⁶²You will be left few in number, even though you were as the stars of the sky for multitude, because you didn’t listen to the LORD your God’s voice. ⁶³It will happen that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you, so the LORD will rejoice over you to cause you to perish and to destroy you. You will be plucked from the land that you are going in to possess. ⁶⁴The LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. There you will serve other gods which you have not known, you nor your fathers, even wood and stone. ⁶⁵Among these nations you will find no ease, and there will be no rest for the sole of your foot; but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and pining of soul. ⁶⁶Your life will hang in doubt before you. You will be afraid night and day, and will have no assurance of your life. ⁶⁷In the morning you will say, “I wish it were evening!” and at evening you will say, “I wish it were morning!” for the fear of your heart which you will fear, and for the sights which your eyes will see. ⁶⁸The LORD will bring you into Egypt again with ships, by the way of which I told you that you would never see it again. There you will offer yourselves to your enemies for male and female slaves, and nobody will buy you.

¹⁸lest there should be among you man, woman, family, or tribe whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that produces bitter poison; ¹⁹and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,” to destroy the moist with the dry. ²⁰The LORD will not pardon him, but then the LORD’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book will fall on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under the sky. ²¹The LORD will set him apart for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.

²²The generation to come—your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a far land—will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick, ²³that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath.

¹⁷‘Behold, the days come that all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have laid up in store to this day, will be carried to Babylon. Nothing will be left,’ says the LORD.

¹⁷But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away and worship other gods, and serve 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.

¹In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it around it. ²So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. ³On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine was severe in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. ⁴Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden (now the Chaldeans were against the city around it); and the king went by the way of the Arabah.

¹³know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no longer drive these nations from out of your sight; but they shall be a snare and a trap to you, a scourge in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land which the LORD your God has given you.

¹²therefore the LORD the God of Israel says, ‘Behold, I will bring such evil on Jerusalem and Judah that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle. ¹³I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plumb line of Ahab’s house; and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.

²⁷Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book.