The LORD has spoken: "Those who rule Judah are doomed because they rebel against me. They follow plans that I did not make, and sign treaties against my will, piling one sin on another.

But the king will be powerless to help them, and Egypt's protection will end in disaster.

I will see to it that you will not prosper, but will be destroyed. All of you will die, either in war or of disease, until not one of you is left.

All the people who are determined to go and live in Egypt will die either in war or of starvation or disease. Not one of them will survive, not one will escape the disaster that I am going to bring on them.'

You snakes and children of snakes! How do you expect to escape from being condemned to hell?

But you, my friend, do those very things for which you pass judgment on others! Do you think you will escape God's judgment?

How, then, shall we escape if we pay no attention to such a great salvation? The Lord himself first announced this salvation, and those who heard him proved to us that it is true.

I am going to force you and your mother into exile. You will go to a country where neither of you was born, and both of you will die there.

You will long to see this country again, but you will never return."

So then, remember this: you will die in war or of starvation or disease in the land where you want to go and live."

But a few of you will escape death and return from Egypt to Judah. Then the survivors will know whose words have come true, mine or theirs.

The time is coming when the LORD will make every plant and tree in the land grow large and beautiful. All the people of Israel who survive will take delight and pride in the crops that the land produces.

A time is coming when the people of Israel who have survived will not rely any more on the nation that almost destroyed them. They will truly put their trust in the LORD, Israel's holy God.

And Isaiah exclaims about Israel: "Even if the people of Israel are as many as the grains of sand by the sea, yet only a few of them will be saved;

It is the same way now: there is a small number left of those whom God has chosen because of his grace.

His choice is based on his grace, not on what they have done. For if God's choice were based on what people do, then his grace would not be real grace.