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“I will give you peace in the land, and you will be able to sleep with no cause for fear. I will rid the land of wild animals and keep your enemies out of your land.
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In fact, you will chase down your enemies and slaughter them with your swords.
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Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand! All your enemies will fall beneath your sword.
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I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you—wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them.
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I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will run even when no one is chasing you!
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I will send armies against you to carry out the curse of the covenant you have broken. When you run to your towns for safety, I will send a plague to destroy you there, and you will be handed over to your enemies.
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Yes, I myself will devastate your land, and your enemies who come to occupy it will be appalled at what they see.
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Then at last the land will enjoy its neglected Sabbath years as it lies desolate while you are in exile in the land of your enemies. Then the land will finally rest and enjoy the Sabbaths it missed.
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“And for those of you who survive, I will demoralize you in the land of your enemies. You will live in such fear that the sound of a leaf driven by the wind will send you fleeing. You will run as though fleeing from a sword, and you will fall even when no one pursues you.
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Though no one is chasing you, you will stumble over each other as though fleeing from a sword. You will have no power to stand up against your enemies.
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You will die among the foreign nations and be devoured in the land of your enemies.
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Those of you who survive will waste away in your enemies’ lands because of their sins and the sins of their ancestors.
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When I have turned their hostility back on them and brought them to the land of their enemies, then at last their stubborn hearts will be humbled, and they will pay for their sins.
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“But despite all this, I will not utterly reject or despise them while they are in exile in the land of their enemies. I will not cancel my covenant with them by wiping them out, for I am the Lord their God.