You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. ¹  Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors.

But after it had been moved the Lord attacked ¹  that city as well, causing a great deal of panic. He struck all the people of that city ²  with sores. ³ 

For we have been sold ¹  – both I and my people – to destruction and to slaughter and to annihilation! If we had simply been sold as male and female slaves, I would have remained silent, for such distress would not have been sufficient for troubling the king.”

Disaster will overtake you; you will not know how to charm it away. ¹  Destruction will fall on you; you will not be able to appease it. Calamity will strike you suddenly, before you recognize it. ² 

Why do you forget ¹  the Lord, who made you, who stretched out the sky ²  and founded the earth? Why do you constantly tremble all day long ³  at the anger of the oppressor, when he makes plans to destroy? Where is the anger of the oppressor? ⁴ 

The people say, ¹  “Why are we just sitting here? Let us gather together inside the fortified cities. ²  Let us at least die there fighting, ³  since the Lord our God has condemned us to die. He has condemned us to drink the poison waters of judgment ⁴  because we have sinned against him. ⁵ 

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 

“Sharpen ¹  your arrows! Fill your quivers! ²  The Lord will arouse a spirit of hostility in ³  the kings of Media. ⁴  For he intends to destroy Babylonia. For that is how the Lord will get his revenge – how he will get his revenge for the Babylonians’ destruction of his temple. ⁵ 

because we are about to destroy ¹  it. The outcry against this place ²  is so great before the Lord that he ³  has sent us to destroy it.”

“Very well,” he replied, ¹  “I will grant this request too ²  and will not overthrow ³  the town you mentioned.

So he overthrew those cities and all that region, ¹  including all the inhabitants of the cities and the vegetation that grew ²  from the ground.

Fish ¹  in the Nile will die, the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will be unable ²  to drink water from the Nile.”’”

But ¹  for this purpose I have caused you to stand: ²  to show you ³  my strength, and so that my name may be declared ⁴  in all the earth.

So now, leave me alone ¹  so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them, and I will make from you a great nation.”

If a man has sexual intercourse ¹  with any animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal.

As for any person ¹  who does any work on this particular day, I will exterminate ²  that person from the midst of his people! ³ 

I will lay your cities waste ¹  and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will refuse to smell your soothing aromas.

When it reverts ¹  in the jubilee, the field will be holy to the Lord like a permanently dedicated field; ²  it will become the priest’s property. ³ 

I will strike them with the pestilence, ¹  and I will disinherit them; I will make you into a nation that is greater and mightier than they!”

‘Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to them, he killed them in the wilderness.’