³⁴ The fields that used to lie empty and desolate in plain view of everyone will again be farmed.

¹⁴ I will crush them and make their cities desolate from the wilderness in the south to Riblah^[a] in the north. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”

⁹ I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy^[a] you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever. ¹⁰ I will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard. Your millstones will fall silent, and the lights in your homes will go out. ¹¹ This entire land will become a desolate wasteland. Israel and her neighboring lands will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.

²¹ So the message of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah was fulfilled. The land finally enjoyed its Sabbath rest, lying desolate until the seventy years were fulfilled, just as the prophet had said.

²³ They will exclaim, ‘The whole land is devastated by sulfur and salt. It is a wasteland with nothing planted and nothing growing, not even a blade of grass. It is like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger.’

²⁴ “And all the surrounding nations will ask, ‘Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why was he so angry?’

²⁵ “And the answer will be, ‘This happened because the people of the land abandoned the covenant that the Lord, the God of their ancestors, made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. ²⁶ Instead, they turned away to serve and worship gods they had not known before, gods that were not from the Lord. ²⁷ That is why the Lord’s anger has burned against this land, bringing down on it every curse recorded in this book. ²⁸ In great anger and fury the Lord uprooted his people from their land and banished them to another land, where they still live today!’