Study Desk

Lord , from the very beginning you are God. You are my God, holy and eternal. Lord , my God and protector, you have chosen the Babylonians and made them strong so that they can punish us.

But how can you stand these treacherous, evil men? Your eyes are too holy to look at evil, and you cannot stand the sight of people doing wrong. So why are you silent while they destroy people who are more righteous than they are?

The Babylonians catch people with hooks, as though they were fish. They drag them off in nets and shout for joy over their catch!

They even worship their nets and offer sacrifices to them, because their nets provide them with the best of everything.

Are they going to use their swords forever and keep on destroying nations without mercy?

And this is the message: ‘Those who are evil will not survive, but those who are righteous will live because they are faithful to God.'"

Wealth is deceitful. Greedy people are proud and restless—like death itself they are never satisfied. That is why they conquer nation after nation for themselves.

The conquered people will taunt their conquerors and show their scorn for them. They will say, "You take what isn't yours, but you are doomed! How long will you go on getting rich by forcing your debtors to pay up?"

But before you know it, you that have conquered others will be in debt yourselves and be forced to pay interest. Enemies will come and make you tremble. They will plunder you!

The nations you conquered wore themselves out in useless labor, and all they have built goes up in flames. The Lord Almighty has done this.

You are doomed! In your fury you humiliated and disgraced your neighbors; you made them stagger as though they were drunk.

When the mountains saw you, they trembled; water poured down from the skies. The waters under the earth roared, and their waves rose high.

Their wealth will be looted and their houses destroyed. They will never live in the houses they are building or drink wine from the vineyards they are planting."

The Lord says, "I will bring such disasters on the human race that everyone will grope about like someone blind. They have sinned against me, and now their blood will be poured out like water, and their dead bodies will lie rotting on the ground."

The people of Judah who survive will occupy your land. They will pasture their flocks there and sleep in the houses of Ashkelon. The Lord their God will be with them and make them prosper again.

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.

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."

I thought that then my people would have reverence for me and accept my discipline, that they would never forget the lesson I taught them. But soon they were behaving as badly as ever.

"Then I will change the people of the nations, and they will pray to me alone and not to other gods. They will all obey me.

The people of Israel who survive will do no wrong to anyone, tell no lies, nor try to deceive. They will be prosperous and secure, afraid of no one."