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.’
28. “Israel is a nation without sense;they have no wisdom at all.
29. They fail to see why they were defeated;they cannot understand what happened.
30. Why were a thousand defeated by one,and 10,000 by only two?The Lord, their God, had abandoned them;their mighty God had given them up.
31. Their enemies know that their own gods are weak,not mighty like Israel's God.
32. Their enemies, corrupt as Sodom and Gomorrah,are like vines that bear bitter and poisonous grapes,
33. like wine made from the venom of snakes.
34. “The Lord remembers what their enemies have done;he waits for the right time to punish them.
35. The Lord will take revenge and punish them;the time will come when they will fall;the day of their doom is near.
36. The Lord will rescue his peoplewhen he sees that their strength is gone.He will have mercy on those who serve him,when he sees how helpless they are.
37. Then the Lord will ask his people,‘Where are those mighty gods you trusted?
38. You fed them with the fat of your sacrificesand offered them wine to drink.Let them come and help you now;let them run to your rescue.