³ But Aaron and Moses persisted. “The God of the Hebrews has met with us,” they declared. “So let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness so we can offer sacrifices to the Lord our God. If we don’t, he will kill us with a plague or with the sword.”

¹⁸ “The elders of Israel will accept your message. Then you and the elders must go to the king of Egypt and tell him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. So please let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord, our God.’

¹⁶ In the end, the enemies of Jerusalem who survive the plague will go up to Jerusalem each year to worship the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, and to celebrate the Festival of Shelters. ¹⁷ Any nation in the world that refuses to come to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, will have no rain. ¹⁸ If the people of Egypt refuse to attend the festival, the Lord will punish^[a] them with the same plague that he sends on the other nations who refuse to go. ¹⁹ Egypt and the other nations will all be punished if they don’t go to celebrate the Festival of Shelters.

¹¹ “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Clap your hands in horror, and stamp your feet. Cry out because of all the detestable sins the people of Israel have committed. Now they are going to die from war and famine and disease.

²⁵ But since these foreign settlers did not worship the Lord when they first arrived, the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them.

²¹ The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy.