Study Desk

The people of Moab will be disappointed by their god Chemosh. They will be as disappointed as the people of Israel were when they put their trust in the calf god at Bethel.

The Lord spoke about the Ammonites. "Do you think there are not any people of the nation of Israel remaining? Do you think there are not any of them remaining to reinherit their land? Is that why you people who worship the god Milcom have taken possession of the territory of Gad and live in his cities?

Wail, you people in Heshbon, because Ai in Ammon is destroyed. Cry out in anguish, you people in the villages surrounding Rabbah. Put on sackcloth and cry out in mourning. Run about covered with gashes. For your god Milcom will go into exile along with his priests and officials.

I will bring terror on you from every side," says the Lord God who rules over all. "You will be scattered in every direction. No one will gather the fugitives back together.

"When that time comes," says the Lord , "the people of Israel and Judah will return to the land together. They will come back with tears of repentance as they seek the Lord their God.

So I, the Lord God of Israel who rules over all, say: ‘I will punish the king of Babylon and his land just as I punished the king of Assyria.

I have opened up the place where my weapons are stored. I have brought out the weapons for carrying out my wrath. For I, the Lord God who rules over all, have work to carry out in the land of Babylonia.

Listen! Fugitives and refugees are coming from the land of Babylon. They are coming to Zion to declare there how the Lord our God is getting revenge, getting revenge for what they have done to his temple.

"Listen! I am opposed to you, you proud city," says the Lord God who rules over all. "Indeed, your day of reckoning has come, the time when I will punish you.

"For Israel and Judah will not be forsaken by their God, the Lord who rules over all. For the land of Babylonia is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel.

The exiles from Judah will say, ‘The Lord has brought about a great deliverance for us! Come on, let's go and proclaim in Zion what the Lord our God has done!'

For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, ‘Fair Babylon will be like a threshing floor which has been trampled flat for harvest. The time for her to be cut down and harvested will come very soon.'

I will punish the god Bel in Babylon. I will make him spit out what he has swallowed. The nations will not come streaming to him any longer. Indeed, the walls of Babylon will fall."

For a destroyer is attacking Babylon. Her warriors will be captured; their bows will be broken. For the Lord is a God who punishes; he pays back in full.

Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven:

Then I perceived that the glory of the God of Israel was there, as in the vision I had seen earlier in the valley.

Then the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherub where it had rested to the threshold of the temple. He called to the man dressed in linen who had the writing kit at his side.

The sound of the wings of the cherubim could be heard from the outer court, like the sound of the sovereign God when he speaks.

The cherubim spread their wings, and they rose up from the earth while I watched (when they went the wheels went alongside them). They stopped at the entrance to the east gate of the Lord 's temple as the glory of the God of Israel hovered above them.

These were the living creatures which I saw at the Kebar River underneath the God of Israel; I knew that they were cherubim.