Study Desk

Our food disappears before our very eyes. No joyful celebrations are held in the house of our God.

Don't tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead." Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish.

Who knows? Perhaps he will give you a reprieve, sending you a blessing instead of this curse. Perhaps you will be able to offer grain and wine to the Lord your God as before.

Let the priests, who minister in the Lord 's presence, stand and weep between the entry room to the Temple and the altar. Let them pray, "Spare your people, Lord ! Don't let your special possession become an object of mockery. Don't let them become a joke for unbelieving foreigners who say, ‘Has the God of Israel left them?'"

Rejoice, you people of Jerusalem! Rejoice in the Lord your God! For the rain he sends demonstrates his faithfulness. Once more the autumn rains will come, as well as the rains of spring.

Once again you will have all the food you want, and you will praise the Lord your God, who does these miracles for you. Never again will my people be disgraced.

Then you will know that I am among my people Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other. Never again will my people be disgraced.

"Then you will know that I, the Lord your God, live in Zion, my holy mountain. Jerusalem will be holy forever, and foreign armies will never conquer her again.

"Now listen to this, and announce it throughout all Israel," says the Lord, the Lord God of Heaven's Armies.

"Therefore, I will bring upon you all the disasters I have announced. Prepare to meet your God in judgment, you people of Israel!"

For the Lord is the one who shaped the mountains, stirs up the winds, and reveals his thoughts to mankind. He turns the light of dawn into darkness and treads on the heights of the earth. The Lord God of Heaven's Armies is his name!

Do what is good and run from evil so that you may live! Then the Lord God of Heaven's Armies will be your helper, just as you have claimed.

Hate evil and love what is good; turn your courts into true halls of justice. Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Heaven's Armies will have mercy on the remnant of his people.

Therefore, this is what the Lord, the Lord God of Heaven's Armies, says: "There will be crying in all the public squares and mourning in every street. Call for the farmers to weep with you, and summon professional mourners to wail.

No, you served your pagan gods—Sakkuth your king god and Kaiwan your star god—the images you made for yourselves.

So I will send you into exile, to a land east of Damascus," says the Lord , whose name is the God of Heaven's Armies.

The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his own name, and this is what he, the Lord God of Heaven's Armies, says: "I despise the arrogance of Israel, and I hate their fortresses. I will give this city and everything in it to their enemies."

"O people of Israel, I am about to bring an enemy nation against you," says the Lord God of Heaven's Armies. "They will oppress you throughout your land— from Lebo-hamath in the north to the Arabah Valley in the south."

And those who swear by the shameful idols of Samaria— who take oaths in the name of the god of Dan and make vows in the name of the god of Beersheba— they will all fall down, never to rise again."

I will firmly plant them there in their own land. They will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the Lord your God.