"Do they provoke Me to anger?" says the LORD. "[Do they] not [provoke] themselves, to the shame of their own faces?"

"Yet you have not listened to Me," says the LORD, "that you might provoke Me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.

"For you were hypocrites in your hearts when you sent me to the LORD your God, saying, 'Pray for us to the LORD our God, and according to all that the LORD your God says, so declare to us and we will do [it.']

"The censers of these men who sinned against their own souls, let them be made into hammered plates as a covering for the altar. Because they presented them before the LORD, therefore they are holy; and they shall be a sign to the children of Israel."

But they lie in wait for their [own] blood, They lurk secretly for their [own] lives.

His own iniquities entrap the wicked [man,] And he is caught in the cords of his sin.

But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death."

He who disdains instruction despises his own soul, But he who heeds rebuke gets understanding.

"Say to them: '[As] I live,' says the Lord GOD, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?'

You give shameful counsel to your house, Cutting off many peoples, And sin [against] your soul.

'in that you provoke Me to wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have gone to dwell, that you may cut yourselves off and be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth?

" Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: 'Behold, I will set My face against you for catastrophe and for cutting off all Judah.

For death has come through our windows, Has entered our palaces, To kill off the children -- [no longer to be] outside! [And] the young men -- [no longer] on the streets!

With you also I will break in pieces man and woman; With you I will break in pieces old and young; With you I will break in pieces the young man and the maiden;

And they utterly destroyed all that [was] in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.

"And this [is] the thing that you shall do: You shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman who has known a man intimately."

The sword shall destroy outside; [There shall be] terror within For the young man and virgin, The nursing child with the man of gray hairs.

'Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.' "

Also Nob, the city of the priests, he struck with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and nursing infants, oxen and donkeys and sheep -- with the edge of the sword.

My eyes fail with tears, My heart is troubled; My bile is poured on the ground Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the children and the infants Faint in the streets of the city.

'And I will take the remnant of Judah who have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to dwell there, and they shall all be consumed [and] fall in the land of Egypt. They shall be consumed by the sword [and] by famine. They shall die, from the least to the greatest, by the sword and by famine; and they shall be an oath, an astonishment, a curse and a reproach!

'so that none of the remnant of Judah who have gone into the land of Egypt to dwell there shall escape or survive, lest they return to the land of Judah, to which they desire to return and dwell. For none shall return except those who escape.' "

'Behold, I will watch over them for adversity and not for good. And all the men of Judah who [are] in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, until there is an end to them.

'Yet a small number who escape the sword shall return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah; and all the remnant of Judah, who have gone to the land of Egypt to dwell there, shall know whose words will stand, Mine or theirs.