I will punish you. I will bring disaster on you---incurable diseases and fevers that will make you blind and cause your life to waste away. You will plant your crops, but it will do you no good, because your enemies will conquer you and eat what you have grown.

I will bring war on you to punish you for breaking our covenant, and if you gather in your cities for safety, I will send incurable diseases among you, and you will be forced to surrender to your enemies.

I will cut off your food supply, so that ten women will need only one oven to bake all the bread they have. They will ration it out, and when you have eaten it all, you will still be hungry.

then in my anger I will turn on you and again make your punishment seven times worse than before.

I will destroy your places of worship on the hills, tear down your incense altars, and throw your dead bodies on your fallen idols. In utter disgust

I will destroy your land so completely that the enemies who occupy it will be shocked at the destruction.

Then the land will enjoy the years of complete rest that you would not give it; it will lie abandoned and get its rest while you are in exile in the land of your enemies.

"I will make those of you who are in exile so terrified that the sound of a leaf blowing in the wind will make you run. You will run as if you were being pursued in battle, and you will fall when there is no enemy near you.

You will die in exile, swallowed up by the land of your enemies.

"But your descendants will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, who resisted me and rebelled against me,

I will remember my covenant with Jacob and with Isaac and with Abraham, and I will renew my promise to give my people the land.

But even then, when they are still in the land of their enemies, I will not completely abandon them or destroy them. That would put an end to my covenant with them, and I am the LORD their God.

All these are the laws and commands that the LORD gave to Moses on Mount Sinai for the people of Israel.

He will send disease after disease on you until there is not one of you left in the land that you are about to occupy.

The LORD will strike you with infectious diseases, with swelling and fever; he will send drought and scorching winds to destroy your crops. These disasters will be with you until you die.

"The LORD will give your enemies victory over you. You will attack them from one direction, but you will run from them in all directions, and all the people on earth will be terrified when they see what happens to you.

"You will plant plenty of seed, but reap only a small harvest, because the locusts will eat your crops.

Olive trees will grow everywhere in your land, but you will not have any olive oil, because the olives will drop off.

All your trees and crops will be devoured by insects.

They will attack every town in the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and the high, fortified walls in which you trust will fall.

Even the most refined man of noble birth will become so desperate during the siege that he will eat some of his own children because he has no other food. He will not even give any to his brother or to the wife he loves or to any of his children who are left.

Even the most refined woman of noble birth, so rich that she has never had to walk anywhere, will behave in the same way. When the enemy besieges her town, she will become so desperate for food that she will secretly eat her newborn child and the afterbirth as well. She will not share them with the husband she loves or with any of her children.

"If you do not obey faithfully all of God's teachings that are written in this book and if you do not honor the wonderful and awesome name of the LORD your God,

He will bring on you once again all the dreadful diseases you experienced in Egypt, and you will never recover.

As a result of the siege the food shortage in the city was so severe that a donkey's head cost eighty pieces of silver, and half a pound of dove's dung cost five pieces of silver.

He replied, "If the LORD won't help you, what help can I provide? Do I have any wheat or wine?

So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I told her that we would eat her son, but she had hidden him!"

Three years of famine? Or three months of running away from the armies of your enemies? Or three days during which the LORD attacks you with his sword and sends an epidemic on your land, using his angel to bring death throughout Israel? What answer shall I give the LORD?"

"When there is famine in the land or an epidemic or the crops are destroyed by scorching winds or swarms of locusts, or when your people are attacked by their enemies, or when there is disease or sickness among them,

hear their prayer. Listen to them in your home in heaven and forgive them. You alone know the thoughts of the human heart. Deal with each of us as we deserve,

that if any disaster struck them to punish them---a war, an epidemic, or a famine---then they could come and stand in front of this Temple where you are worshiped. They could pray to you in their trouble, and you would hear them and rescue them.

He commanded, and the locusts came, countless millions of them;

they ate all the plants in the land; they ate all the crops.

At that time the army of the king of Babylonia was attacking Jerusalem, and I was locked up in the courtyard of the royal palace.

In the tenth month of the ninth year that Zedekiah was king of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia came with his whole army and attacked Jerusalem.

(When Jerusalem was captured, all the high officials of the king of Babylonia came and took their places at the Middle Gate, including Nergal Sharezer, Samgar Nebo, Sarsechim, and another Nergal Sharezer. )

This is what the Sovereign LORD is saying: "I will send my four worst punishments on Jerusalem---war, famine, wild animals, and disease---to destroy people and animals alike.

Swarm after swarm of locusts settled on the crops; what one swarm left, the next swarm devoured.

An army of locusts has attacked our land; they are powerful and too many to count; their teeth are as sharp as those of a lion.

I will give you back what you lost in the years when swarms of locusts ate your crops. It was I who sent this army against you.

Now you will have plenty to eat, and be satisfied. You will praise the LORD your God, who has done wonderful things for you. My people will never be despised again.