“I am against you!” declares ¹  the Lord who commands armies: ²  “I will burn your chariots ³  with fire; ⁴  the sword will devour your young lions; ⁵  you will no longer prey upon the land; ⁶  the voices of your messengers ⁷  will no longer be heard.”

If someone carries holy meat in a fold of his garment and that fold touches bread, a boiled dish, wine, olive oil, or any other food, will that item become holy?’” ¹  The priests answered, “It will not.”

Listen now, Joshua the high priest, both you and your colleagues who are sitting before you, all of you ¹  are a symbol that I am about to introduce my servant, the Branch. ² 

As for the stone ¹  I have set before Joshua – on the one stone there are seven eyes. ²  I am about to engrave an inscription on it,’ says the Lord who rules over all, ‘to the effect that I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. ³ 

“I am about to send my messenger, ¹  who will clear the way before me. Indeed, the Lord ²  you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger ³  of the covenant, whom you long for, is certainly coming,” says the Lord who rules over all.

that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ¹  ‘The forces at your disposal ²  are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians ³  who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. ⁴ 

So I, the Lord, affirm that ¹  I will send for all the peoples of the north ²  and my servant, ³  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ⁴  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ⁵  and make them everlasting ruins. ⁶  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ⁷ 

Because he has done this,” ¹  the Lord says, “I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his whole family. There will not be any of them left to experience the good things that I will do for my people. I, the Lord, affirm it! For he counseled rebellion against the Lord.”’” ² 

So I, the Lord, say: “You have not really obeyed me and granted freedom to your neighbor and fellow countryman. ¹  Therefore, I will grant you freedom, the freedom ²  to die in war, or by starvation or disease. I, the Lord, affirm it! ³  I will make all the kingdoms of the earth horrified at what happens to you. ⁴ 

So I, the Lord, the God who rules over all, the God of Israel, say: ¹  “I will soon bring on Judah and all the citizens of Jerusalem all the disaster that I threatened to bring on them. I will do this because I spoke to them but they did not listen. I called out to them but they did not answer.”’”

But ¹  listen to what the Lord has to say, all you people of Judah who are living in the land of Egypt. The Lord says, ‘I hereby swear by my own great name that none of the people of Judah who are living anywhere in Egypt will ever again invoke my name in their oaths! Never again will any of them use it in an oath saying, “As surely as the Lord God lives….” ² 

and say to the scrub land of the Negev, ‘Hear the word of the Lord: This is what the sovereign Lord says: Look here, ¹  I am about to start a fire in you, ²  and it will devour every green tree and every dry tree in you. The flaming fire will not be extinguished, and the whole surface of the ground from the Negev to the north will be scorched by it.