Study Desk

People of Egypt, go to Gilead and look for medicine! All your medicine has proved useless; nothing can heal you.

He said: "Look! Waters are rising in the north and will rush like a river in flood. They will cover the land and everything on it, cities and the people who live there. People will call out for help; everyone on earth will cry bitterly.

They will hear the hoofbeats of horses, the clatter of chariots, the rumble of wheels. Parents will not turn back for their children; their hands will hang limp at their sides.

‘Quick, run for your lives!' they say. ‘Run like a wild desert donkey!'

Set up a tombstone for Moab; it will soon be destroyed. Its towns will be left in ruins, and no one will live there again."

"Mourn for that nation, you that live nearby, all of you that know its fame. Say, ‘Its powerful rule has been broken; its glory and might are no more.'

‘Moab has fallen,' they will answer, ‘weep for it; it is disgraced. Announce along the Arnon River that Moab is destroyed!'

And so I will weep for everyone in Moab and for the people of Kir Heres.

I will cry for the people of Sibmah, even more than for the people of Jazer. City of Sibmah, you are like a vine whose branches reach across the Dead Sea and go as far as Jazer. But now your summer fruits and your grapes have been destroyed.

Happiness and joy have been taken away from the fertile land of Moab. I have made the wine stop flowing from the wine presses; there is no one to make the wine and shout for joy.

"So my heart mourns for Moab and for the people of Kir Heres, like someone playing a funeral song on a flute, because everything they owned is gone.

Terror, pits, and traps are waiting for the people of Moab. The Lord has spoken.

Whoever tries to escape the terror will fall into the pits, and whoever climbs out of the pits will be caught in the traps, because the Lord has set the time for Moab's destruction.

I will bring terror on you from every side. You will all run away. Each one will run for his life, and there will be no one to bring your troops together again.

People of Dedan, turn and run! Hide! I am going to destroy Esau's descendants because the time has come for me to punish them.

The Lord says, "When that time comes, the people of both Israel and Judah will come weeping, looking for me, their God.

"Archers, line up for battle against Babylon and surround it. Shoot all your arrows at Babylon, because it has sinned against me, the Lord .

Babylonia, you fought against me, and you have been caught in the trap I set for you, even though you did not know it.

Kill all their soldiers! Slaughter them! The people of Babylonia are doomed! The time has come for them to be punished!"

(Refugees escape from Babylonia and come to Jerusalem, and they tell how the Lord our God took revenge for what the Babylonians had done to his Temple.)