23. I will bring one disaster after another on them.I will use up all my arrows on them.
24. They will be starved by faminesand ravaged by pestilence and deadly epidemics.I will send vicious animals against themalong with poisonous animals that crawl on the ground.
25. Foreign wars will kill off their children,and even at home there will be horrors.Young men and young women alike will dieas well as nursing babies and gray-haired men.
26. I said that I would cut them in pieces and erase everyone’s memory of them.
27. But I didn’t want their enemies to make me angry.I didn’t want their opponents to misunderstand and say,‘We won this victory!It wasn’t the Lord who did all this!’ ”
28. My people have lost their good sense.They are not able to understand.
29. If only they were wise enough to understand thisand realize what will happen to them!
30. How could one person chase a thousandor two people make ten thousand flee?Their rock used these people to defeat themand the Lord gave them no help.
31. Their rock isn’t like our rock.Even our enemies will agree with this.
32. Their grapevines come from the vineyards of Sodomand from the fields of Gomorrah.Their grapes are poisonous,and their clusters are bitter.
33. Their wine is snake venom,the deadly poison of cobras.
34. Isn’t this what I’ve storedunder lock and key in my storehouses?
35. I will take revenge and be satisfied.In due time their foot will slip,because their day of disaster is near.Their doom is coming quickly.
36. The Lord will judge his peopleand have compassion on his servantswhen he sees that their strength is goneand that no one is left, neither slaves nor free people.
37. Then he will ask, “Where are their gods?Where is the rock they took refuge in?