Jeremiah 25:21

¹Of Moab. The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Woe to Nebo! For it is laid waste. Kiriathaim is disappointed. It is taken. Misgab^[+] is put to shame and broken down. ²The praise of Moab is no more. In Heshbon they have devised evil against her: ‘Come! Let’s cut her off from being a nation.’ You also, Madmen, will be brought to silence. The sword will pursue you. ³The sound of a cry from Horonaim, desolation and great destruction! ⁴Moab is destroyed. Her little ones have caused a cry to be heard. ⁵For they will go up by the ascent of Luhith with continual weeping. For at the descent of Horonaim they have heard the distress of the cry of destruction. ⁶Flee! Save your lives! Be like the juniper bush in the wilderness. ⁷For, because you have trusted in your works and in your treasures, you also will be taken. Chemosh will go out into captivity, his priests and his princes together. ⁸The destroyer will come on every city, and no city will escape; the valley also will perish, and the plain will be destroyed, as the LORD has spoken. ⁹Give wings to Moab, that she may fly and get herself away: and her cities will become a desolation, without anyone to dwell in them. ¹⁰“Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD negligently; and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood. ¹¹“Moab has been at ease from his youth, and he has settled on his dregs, and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither has he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remains in him, and his scent is not changed. ¹²Therefore behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that I will send to him those who pour off, and they will pour him off; and they will empty his vessels, and break their containers in pieces. ¹³Moab will be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence. ¹⁴“How do you say, ‘We are mighty men, and valiant men for the war’? ¹⁵Moab is laid waste, and they have gone up into his cities, and his chosen young men have gone down to the slaughter,” says the King, whose name is the LORD of Armies. ¹⁶“The calamity of Moab is near to come, and his affliction hurries fast. ¹⁷All you who are around him, bemoan him; and all you who know his name, say, ‘How the strong staff is broken, the beautiful rod!’ ¹⁸“You daughter who dwells in Dibon, come down from your glory, and sit in thirst; for the destroyer of Moab has come up against you. He has destroyed your strongholds. ¹⁹Inhabitant of Aroer, stand by the way and watch. Ask him who flees, and her who escapes; say, ‘What has been done?’ ²⁰Moab is disappointed; for it is broken down. Wail and cry! Tell it by the Arnon, that Moab is laid waste. ²¹Judgment has come on the plain country— on Holon, on Jahzah, on Mephaath, ²²on Dibon, on Nebo, on Beth Diblathaim,

⁷Remember, LORD, against the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, who said, “Raze it! Raze it even to its foundation!”

²⁶Egypt, Judah, Edom, the children of Ammon, Moab, and all who have the corners of their hair cut off, who dwell in the wilderness, for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.”

¹Come near, you nations, to hear! Listen, you peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, the world, and everything that comes from it. ²For the LORD is enraged against all the nations, and angry with all their armies. He has utterly destroyed them. He has given them over for slaughter. ³Their slain will also be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies will come up. The mountains will melt in their blood. ⁴All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree. ⁵For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment. ⁶The LORD’s sword is filled with blood. It is covered with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. ⁷The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; and their land will be drunken with blood, and their dust made greasy with fat. ⁸For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. ⁹Its streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch. ¹⁰It won’t be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever. ¹¹But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. ¹²They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing. ¹³Thorns will come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses; and it will be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. ¹⁴The wild animals of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his fellow. Yes, the night creature^[+] shall settle there, and shall find herself a place of rest. ¹⁵The arrow snake will make her nest there, and lay, hatch, and gather under her shade. Yes, the kites will be gathered there, every one with her mate. ¹⁶Search in the book of the LORD, and read: not one of these will be missing. None will lack her mate. For my mouth has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. ¹⁷He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them with a measuring line. They shall possess it forever. From generation to generation they will dwell in it.

⁸I have heard the reproach of Moab and the insults of the children of Ammon, with which they have reproached my people and magnified themselves against their border. ⁹Therefore, as I live, says the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, surely Moab will be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, a possession of nettles and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation. The remnant of my people will plunder them, and the survivors of my nation will inherit them. ¹⁰This they will have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of Armies.

²“I have loved you,” says the LORD. Yet you say, “How have you loved us?” “Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” says the LORD, “Yet I loved Jacob;

³but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.” ⁴Whereas Edom says, “We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places,” the LORD of Armies says, “They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them ‘The Wicked Land,’ even the people against whom the LORD shows wrath forever.”

¹The vision of Obadiah. This is what the Lord^[+] GOD ^[+] says about Edom. We have heard news from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the nations, saying, “Arise, and let’s rise up against her in battle. ²Behold, ^[+] I have made you small among the nations. You are greatly despised. ³The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high, who says in his heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?’ ⁴Though you mount on high as the eagle, and though your nest is set among the stars, I will bring you down from there,” says the LORD. ⁵“If thieves came to you, if robbers by night—oh, what disaster awaits you—wouldn’t they only steal until they had enough? If grape pickers came to you, wouldn’t they leave some gleaning grapes? ⁶How Esau will be ransacked! How his hidden treasures are sought out! ⁷All the men of your alliance have brought you on your way, even to the border. The men who were at peace with you have deceived you, and prevailed against you. Friends who eat your bread lay a snare under you. There is no understanding in him.”

⁸“Won’t I in that day”, says the LORD, “destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mountain of Esau? ⁹Your mighty men, Teman, will be dismayed, to the end that everyone may be cut off from the mountain of Esau by slaughter. ¹⁰For the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame will cover you, and you will be cut off forever. ¹¹In the day that you stood on the other side, in the day that strangers carried away his substance and foreigners entered into his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, even you were like one of them. ¹²But don’t look down on your brother in the day of his disaster, and don’t rejoice over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction. Don’t speak proudly in the day of distress. ¹³Don’t enter into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity. Don’t look down on their affliction in the day of their calamity, neither seize their wealth on the day of their calamity. ¹⁴Don’t stand in the crossroads to cut off those of his who escape. Don’t deliver up those of his who remain in the day of distress. ¹⁵For the day of the LORD is near all the nations! As you have done, it will be done to you. Your deeds will return upon your own head. ¹⁶For as you have drunk on my holy mountain, so all the nations will drink continually. Yes, they will drink, swallow down, and will be as though they had not been.

¹Moreover the LORD’s word came to me, saying, ²“Son of man, set your face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it, ³and tell it, ‘The Lord GOD says: “Behold, I am against you, Mount Seir, and I will stretch out my hand against you. I will make you a desolation and an astonishment. ⁴I will lay your cities waste, and you will be desolate. Then you will know that I am the LORD.

⁵“‘“Because you have had a perpetual hostility, and have given over the children of Israel to the power of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end, ⁶therefore, as I live,” says the Lord GOD, “I will prepare you for blood, and blood will pursue you. Since you have not hated blood, therefore blood will pursue you. ⁷Thus I will make Mount Seir an astonishment and a desolation. I will cut off from it him who passes through and him who returns. ⁸I will fill its mountains with its slain. The slain with the sword will fall in your hills and in your valleys and in all your watercourses. ⁹I will make you a perpetual desolation, and your cities will not be inhabited. Then you will know that I am the LORD.

¹⁰“‘“Because you have said, ‘These two nations and these two countries will be mine, and we will possess it,’ although the LORD was there, ¹¹therefore, as I live,” says the Lord GOD, “I will do according to your anger, and according to your envy which you have shown out of your hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them when I judge you. ¹²You will know that I, the LORD, have heard all your insults which you have spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, ‘They have been laid desolate. They have been given to us to devour.’ ¹³You have magnified yourselves against me with your mouth, and have multiplied your words against me. I have heard it.” ¹⁴The Lord GOD says: “When the whole earth rejoices, I will make you desolate. ¹⁵As you rejoiced over the inheritance of the house of Israel because it was desolate, so I will do to you. You will be desolate, Mount Seir, and all Edom, even all of it. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’”

¹Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? Who is this who is glorious in his clothing, marching in the greatness of his strength? “It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” ²Why is your clothing red, and your garments like him who treads in the wine vat? ³“I have trodden the wine press alone. Of the peoples, no one was with me. Yes, I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath. Their lifeblood is sprinkled on my garments, and I have stained all my clothing. ⁴For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redeemed has come. ⁵I looked, and there was no one to help; and I wondered that there was no one to uphold. Therefore my own arm brought salvation to me. My own wrath upheld me. ⁶I trod down the peoples in my anger and made them drunk in my wrath. I poured their lifeblood out on the earth.”

¹⁸The house of Jacob will be a fire, the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble. They will burn among them and devour them. There will not be any remaining to the house of Esau.” Indeed, the LORD has spoken.