If the LORD Almighty had not let some of the people survive, Jerusalem would have been totally destroyed, just as Sodom and Gomorrah were.

Jerusalem, your rulers and your people are like those of Sodom and Gomorrah. Listen to what the LORD is saying to you. Pay attention to what our God is teaching you.

"As surely as I am the living God," the Sovereign LORD says, "your sister Sodom and her villages never did the evil that you and your villages have done.

They were proud and stubborn and did the things that I hate, so I destroyed them, as you well know.

And as for you, Capernaum! Did you want to lift yourself up to heaven? You will be thrown down to hell! If the miracles which were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would still be in existence today!

You can be sure that on the Judgment Day God will show more mercy to Sodom than to you!"

I assure you that on the Judgment Day God will show more mercy to Sodom than to that town!

"The servant who knows what his master wants him to do, but does not get himself ready and do it, will be punished with a heavy whipping.

Those who died in the war were better off than those who died later, who starved slowly to death, with no food to keep them alive.

and destroyed them and the whole valley, along with all the people there and everything that grew on the land.

You did what you said you would do to us and our rulers. You punished Jerusalem more severely than any other city on earth,

For the trouble at that time will be far more terrible than any there has ever been, from the beginning of the world to this very day. Nor will there ever be anything like it again.