Things will go better for the nation that submits to the yoke of servitude to ¹  the king of Babylon and is subject to him. I will leave that nation ²  in its native land. Its people can continue to farm it and live in it. I, the Lord, affirm it!”’” ³ 

So prophesy and say: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Surely because they have made you desolate and crushed you from all directions, so that you have become the property of the rest of the nations, and have become the subject of gossip ¹  and slander among the people,