The Ammonites and Moabites attacked the men from Mount Seir ¹  and annihilated them. ²  When they had finished off the men ³  of Seir, they attacked and destroyed one another. ⁴ 

Shall we once again break your commandments and intermarry with these abominable peoples? Would you not be so angered by us that you would wipe us out, with no survivor or remnant?

I desperately want to be ¹  in the courts of the Lord’s temple. ²  My heart and my entire being ³  shout for joy to the living God.

Answer me quickly, Lord! My strength is fading. ¹  Do not reject me, ²  or I will join ³  those descending into the grave. ⁴ 

For the waters of Nimrim are gone; ¹  the grass is dried up, the vegetation has disappeared, and there are no plants.

Please let the Moabite fugitives live ¹  among you. Hide them ²  from the destroyer!” Certainly ³  the one who applies pressure will cease, ⁴  the destroyer will come to an end, those who trample will disappear ⁵  from the earth.

For this is what the sovereign master ¹  has told me: “Within exactly one year ²  all the splendor of Kedar will come to an end.

This is what will happen throughout ¹  the earth, among the nations. It will be like when they beat an olive tree, and just a few olives are left at the end of the harvest. ² 

For the fortified city ¹  is left alone; it is a deserted settlement and abandoned like the desert. Calves ²  graze there; they lie down there and eat its branches bare. ³ 

The Egyptians are mere humans, not God; their horses are made of flesh, not spirit. The Lord will strike with ¹  his hand; the one who helps will stumble and the one being helped will fall. Together they will perish. ² 

But I thought, ¹  “I have worked in vain; I have expended my energy for absolutely nothing.” ²  But the Lord will vindicate me; my God will reward me. ³ 

Lord, I know you look for faithfulness. ¹  But even when you punish these people, they feel no remorse. ²  Even when you nearly destroy them, they refuse to be corrected. They have become as hardheaded as a rock. ³  They refuse to change their ways. ⁴ 

I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors ¹  have known anything about. I will send people chasing after them with swords ²  until I have destroyed them.’” ³ 

I will indeed ¹  see to it that disaster, not prosperity, happens to them. ²  All the people of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will die in war or from starvation until not one of them is left.

When you finish reading this scroll aloud, tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates River. ¹ 

כ (Kaf) My eyes are worn out ¹  from weeping; ²  my stomach is in knots. ³  My heart ⁴  is poured out on the ground due to the destruction ⁵  of my helpless people; ⁶  children and infants faint in the town squares.

ת (Tav) As if it were a feast day, you call ¹  enemies ²  to terrify me ³  on every side. ⁴  On the day of the Lord’s anger no one escaped or survived. My enemy has finished off those healthy infants whom I bore ⁵  and raised. ⁶ 

ע (Ayin) Our eyes continually failed us as we looked in vain for help. ¹  From our watchtowers we watched for a nation that could not rescue us.

Look here, I will tie you up with ropes, so you cannot turn from one side to the other until you complete the days of your siege. ¹ 

A third of your people will die of plague or be overcome by the famine within you. ¹  A third of your people will fall by the sword surrounding you, ²  and a third I will scatter to the winds. I will unleash a sword behind them.