A Sword and the Ammonites

^28 (A)“Mortal man, prophesy. Announce what I, the Sovereign Lord, am saying to the Ammonites, who are insulting Israel. Say to them:

²⁹ The visions that you see are false, and the predictions you make are lies. You are wicked and evil, and your day is coming, the day of your final punishment. The sword is going to fall on your necks.

³⁰ “‘Put up the sword! I will judge you in the place where you were created, in the land where you were born. ³¹ You will feel my anger when I turn it loose on you like a blazing fire. And I will hand you over to brutal men, experts at destruction. ³² You will be destroyed by fire. Your blood will be shed in your own country, and no one will remember you any more.’” The Lord has spoken.

The Enemy from the North

25 ^(A)In the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, I received a message from the Lord concerning all the people of Judah. (This was the first year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylonia.) ² I said to all the people of Judah and of Jerusalem, ³ “For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon was king of Judah until this very day, the Lord has spoken to me, and I have never failed to tell you what he said. But you have paid no attention. ⁴ You would not listen or pay attention, even though the Lord has continued to send you his servants the prophets. ⁵ They told you to turn from your wicked way of life and from the evil things you are doing, so that you could go on living in the land that the Lord gave you and your ancestors as a permanent possession. ⁶ They told you not to worship and serve other gods and not to make the Lord angry by worshiping the idols you had made. If you had obeyed the Lord, then he would not have punished you. ⁷ But the Lord himself says that you refused to listen to him. Instead, you made him angry with your idols and have brought his punishment on yourselves.

Ammon

^13 (A)The Lord says, “The people of Ammon have sinned again and again, and for this I will certainly punish them. In their wars for more territory they even ripped open pregnant women in Gilead. ¹⁴ So I will send fire upon the city walls of Rabbah and burn down its fortresses. Then there will be shouts on the day of battle, and the fighting will rage like a storm. ¹⁵ Their king and his officers will go into exile.”

^8 (A)The Lord Almighty says, “I have heard the people of Moab and Ammon insulting and taunting my people, and boasting that they would seize their land. ^9 (B)As surely as I am the living Lord, the God of Israel, I swear that Moab and Ammon are going to be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. They will become a place of salt pits and everlasting ruin, overgrown with weeds. Those of my people who survive will plunder them and take their land.”

¹⁰ That is how the people of Moab and Ammon will be punished for their pride and arrogance and for insulting the people of the Lord Almighty. ¹¹ The Lord will terrify them. He will reduce the gods of the earth to nothing, and then every nation will worship him, each in its own land.