Nehemiah 1:3

¹⁷Then I said to them, “You see the bad situation that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come, let’s build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we won’t be disgraced.”

¹⁰All the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem.

³I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why shouldn’t my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates have been consumed with fire?”

⁶These are the children of the province who went up out of the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and who returned to Jerusalem and to Judah, everyone to his city,

¹³I went out by night by the valley gate toward the jackal’s well, then to the dung gate; and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and its gates were consumed with fire.

³⁶“Behold, we are servants today, and as for the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its good, behold, we are servants in it. ³⁷It yields much increase to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. Also they have power over our bodies and over our livestock, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress.

⁸Be it known to the king that we went into the province of Judah, to the house of the great God, which is being built with great stones and timber is laid in the walls. This work goes on with diligence and prospers in their hands.

¹Remember, LORD, what has come on us. Look, and see our reproach.

³Now these are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem; but in the cities of Judah, everyone lived in his possession in their cities—Israel, the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, and the children of Solomon’s servants.

⁸in that you provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have gone to live, that you may be cut off, and that you may be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth? ⁹Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, the wickedness of the kings of Judah, the wickedness of their wives, your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁰They are not humbled even to this day, neither have they feared, nor walked in my law, nor in my statutes, that I set before you and before your fathers.’

¹¹“Therefore the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, even to cut off all Judah. ¹²I will take the remnant of Judah that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to live there, and they will all be consumed. They will fall in the land of Egypt. They will be consumed by the sword and by the famine. They will die, from the least even to the greatest, by the sword and by the famine. They will be an object of horror, an astonishment, a curse, and a reproach.