Listen! Fugitives and refugees are coming from the land of Babylon. They are coming to Zion to declare there how the Lord our God is getting revenge, getting revenge for what they have done to his temple. ¹ 

The exiles from Judah will say, ¹  ‘The Lord has brought about a great deliverance for us! ²  Come on, let’s go and proclaim in Zion what the Lord our God has done!’

ר (Resh) Our very life breath – the Lord’s anointed king ¹  – was caught in their traps, ²  of whom we thought, ³  “Under his protection ⁴  we will survive among the nations.”

In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month, on the fifth of the month, ¹  a refugee came to me from Jerusalem ²  saying, “The city has been defeated!” ³ 

If ¹  our God whom we are serving exists, ²  he is able to rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and he will rescue us, O king, from your power as well.

He has carried out his threats ¹  against us and our rulers ²  who were over ³  us by bringing great calamity on us – what has happened to Jerusalem has never been equaled under all heaven!

The LORD was mindful of the calamity, and he brought it on us. For the LORD our God is just ¹  in all he has done, ²  and we have not obeyed him. ³ 

“Now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with great power ¹  and made a name for yourself that is remembered to this day – we have sinned and behaved wickedly.

“Come on! Let’s return to the Lord! He himself has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us! He has injured ¹  us, but he will bandage our wounds!

For a nation ¹  has invaded ²  our ³  land. There are so many of them they are too numerous to count. ⁴  Their teeth are like those ⁵  of a lion; they tear apart their prey like a lioness. ⁶ 

They will lick the dust like a snake, like serpents crawling on the ground. ¹  They will come trembling from their strongholds to the Lord our God; ²  they will be terrified ³  of you. ⁴ 

I will take away their abominable religious practices; ¹  then those who survive will become a community of believers in our God, ²  like a clan in Judah, and Ekron will be like the Jebusites.

Do we not all have one father? ¹  Did not one God create us? Why do we betray one another, in this way making light of the covenant of our ancestors?

“Out of our way!” ¹  they cried, and “This man came to live here as a foreigner, ²  and now he dares to judge us! ³  We’ll do more harm ⁴  to you than to them!” They kept ⁵  pressing in on Lot until they were close enough ⁶  to break down the door.

“These men are at peace with us. So let them live in the land and travel freely in it, for the land is wide enough ¹  for them. We will take their daughters for wives, and we will give them our daughters to marry. ² 

They said to one other, ¹  “Surely we’re being punished ²  because of our brother, because we saw how distressed he was ³  when he cried to us for mercy, but we refused to listen. That is why this distress ⁴  has come on us!”

They replied, “The man questioned us ¹  thoroughly ²  about ourselves and our family, saying, ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ ³  So we answered him in this way. ⁴  How could we possibly know ⁵  that he would say, ⁶  ‘Bring your brother down’?”

We said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young boy who was born when our father was old. ¹  The boy’s ²  brother is dead. He is the only one of his mother’s sons left, ³  and his father loves him.’

“The elders ¹  will listen ²  to you, and then you and the elders of Israel must go to the king of Egypt and tell him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met ³  with us. So now, let us go ⁴  three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice ⁵  to the Lord our God.’

And they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Let us go a three-day journey ¹  into the desert so that we may sacrifice ²  to the Lord our God, so that he does not strike us with plague or the sword.” ³