19. “When the Lord saw this, he was angryand rejected his sons and daughters.
20. ‘I will no longer help them,’ he said;‘then I will see what happens to them,those stubborn, unfaithful people.
21. With their idols they have made me angry,jealous with their so-called gods,gods that are really not gods.So I will use a so-called nation to make them angry;I will make them jealous with a nation of fools.
22. My anger will flame up like fireand burn everything on earth.It will reach to the world belowand consume the roots of the mountains.
23. “ ‘I will bring on them endless disastersand use all my arrows against them.
24. They will die from hunger and fever;they will die from terrible diseases.I will send wild animals to attack them,and poisonous snakes to bite them.
25. War will bring death in the streets;terrors will strike in the homes.Young men and young women will die;neither babies nor old people will be spared.
26. I would have destroyed them completely,so that no one would remember them.
27. But I could not let their enemies boastthat they had defeated my people,when it was I myself who had crushed them.’