Study Desk

For death has come up through our windows; It has entered our palaces, Cutting off the children from the streets And the young men from the town squares.

My tent is destroyed, And all my [tent] cords are broken; My children have been taken from me [as captives] and are no more. There is no one to stretch out my tent again And to set up my [tent] curtains.

"I will winnow (sort, separate) them with a winnowing fork At the gates of the land; I will deprive them of children, I will destroy My people; They did not repent and turn from their [evil] ways.

As they remember their children, So they remember [in detail] their [pagan] altars and their Asherim Beside green trees on the high hills.

Therefore, give their children over to the famine; Give them over to the power of the sword. And let their wives become childless and widowed; Let their men meet death [by virulent disease], Their young men be struck down by the sword in battle.

"Therefore behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, "when they will no longer say, 'As the LORD lives, who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,'

Edom, Moab, and the children of Ammon;

'Their children too will be as in former times, And their congregation will be established before Me; And I will punish all their oppressors.

Thus says the LORD, "A voice is heard in Ramah, Lamentation (songs of mourning) and bitter weeping. Rachel (Israel) is weeping for her children; She refuses to be comforted for her children, Because they are gone."

Thus says the LORD, "Restrain your voice from weeping And your eyes from tears, For your work will be rewarded," says the LORD; "And your children will return from the enemy's land.

"There is [confident] hope for your future," says the LORD; "Your children will come back to their own country.

You who show lovingkindness to thousands, but repay the wickedness (sin, guilt) of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them [that is, calling the children to account for the sins of their fathers], O great and mighty God; the LORD of hosts is His name;

"For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done only evil in My sight from their youth; for the children of Israel have been provoking Me to anger by the [idols that are the] work of their hands," says the LORD.

because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah which they have done to provoke Me to anger—they, their kings, their princes, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may [reverently] fear Me forever, for their own good and for the good of their children after them.

'Also, all your wives and your children will be brought out to the Chaldeans; and you yourself will not escape from their hand, but you will be seized by the king of Babylon, and this city [Jerusalem] will be burned down with fire.'"

Now when all the commanders of the forces that were [scattered] in the open country [of Judah] and their men heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah the son of Ahikam governor in the land [of Judah] and had put him in charge of the men, women, and children, those of the poorest of the land who had not been exiled to Babylon,

Then Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces that were with him took from Mizpah all the people whom he had rescued from Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, after Ishmael had killed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam: the soldiers, the women, the children, and the high officials whom Johanan had brought back from Gibeon.

the men, women, and children, the king's daughters (ladies of the court), and every person whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the bodyguard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan; he also took Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch the son of Neriah.

"Because of the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of the war-horses [of the Babylonian king], The rattling of his chariots, and the rumbling of his wheels, The fathers have not looked and turned back for their children, So weak are their hands [with terror]