1. Then the Lord said to me, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go!
2. And when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: “‘Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence,and those who are for the sword, to the sword;those who are for famine, to famine,and those who are for captivity, to captivity.’
3. I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy.
4. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.
5. “Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will grieve for you?Who will turn asideto ask about your welfare?
6. You have rejected me, declares the Lord; you keep going backward,so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you— I am weary of relenting.
7. I have winnowed them with a winnowing forkin the gates of the land;I have bereaved them; I have destroyed my people; they did not turn from their ways.
8. I have made their widows more in numberthan the sand of the seas;I have brought against the mothers of young mena destroyer at noonday;I have made anguish and terrorfall upon them suddenly.
9. She who bore seven has grown feeble; she has fainted away; her sun went down while it was yet day;she has been shamed and disgraced.And the rest of them I will give to the swordbefore their enemies,declares the Lord.”
10. Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me.