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“In those days, and in that time,” says Yahweh,
    “the children of Israel will come,
    they and the children of Judah together;
they will go on their way weeping,
    and will seek Yahweh their God.
They will inquire concerning Zion with their faces turned toward it,
    saying, ‘Come, and join yourselves to Yahweh in an everlasting covenant
    that will not be forgotten.’
My people have been lost sheep.
    Their shepherds have caused them to go astray.
They have turned them away on the mountains.
    They have gone from mountain to hill.
    They have forgotten their resting place.
All who found them have devoured them.
    Their adversaries said, ‘We are not guilty,
because they have sinned against Yahweh,
    the habitation of righteousness,
    even Yahweh, the hope of their fathers.’

“Flee out of the middle of Babylon!
    Go out of the land of the Chaldeans,
    and be as the male goats before the flocks.
For, behold, I will stir up
    and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country;
    and they will set themselves in array against her.
She will be taken from there.
    Their arrows will be as of an expert mighty man.
    None of them will return in vain.
10 Chaldea will be a prey.
    All who prey on her will be satisfied,” says Yahweh.

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Hope for Israel and Judah

“In those coming days,”
    says the Lord,
“the people of Israel will return home
    together with the people of Judah.
They will come weeping
    and seeking the Lord their God.
They will ask the way to Jerusalem[a]
    and will start back home again.
They will bind themselves to the Lord
    with an eternal covenant that will never be forgotten.

“My people have been lost sheep.
    Their shepherds have led them astray
    and turned them loose in the mountains.
They have lost their way
    and can’t remember how to get back to the sheepfold.
All who found them devoured them.
    Their enemies said,
‘We did nothing wrong in attacking them,
    for they sinned against the Lord,
their true place of rest,
    and the hope of their ancestors.’

“But now, flee from Babylon!
    Leave the land of the Babylonians.
Like male goats at the head of the flock,
    lead my people home again.
For I am raising up an army
    of great nations from the north.
They will join forces to attack Babylon,
    and she will be captured.
The enemies’ arrows will go straight to the mark;
    they will not miss!
10 Babylonia[b] will be looted
    until the attackers are glutted with loot.
    I, the Lord, have spoken!

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Footnotes

  1. 50:5 Hebrew Zion; also in 50:28.
  2. 50:10 Or Chaldea.