The Lord Answers

⁵ Look at the nations and pay attention! Be completely dumbfounded, because I will do something in your lifetime that you will not believe, even though you are warned ahead of time. ⁶ Watch, I am raising up the Chaldeans,^[a] that savage, reckless nation. They will sweep across the whole width of the earth, seizing lands and homes that do not belong to them. ⁷ They are frightening and terrifying. They invent their own standard of justice and their own values. ⁸ Their horses are quicker than leopards and fiercer than wolves that prowl at night. Their war horses come galloping. Their war horses come from far away. They fly like vultures^[b] swooping down to devour. ⁹ All of them come to commit violence. Their hordes blow by like the desert wind^[c] and sweep up prisoners like sand. ¹⁰ They mock kings, and rulers are subjected to scorn. They laugh at every fortified city. They heap up siege ramps and capture cities. ¹¹ But then the wind blows and passes over them,^[d] and they will bear their guilt—these men whose own strength is their god.