¹¹“So then, I, the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, will turn against you and destroy all Judah. ¹²As for the people of Judah who are left and are determined to go and live in Egypt, I will see to it that all of them are destroyed. All of them, great and small, will die in Egypt, either in war or of starvation. They will be a horrifying sight; people will treat them with scorn and use their name as a curse. ¹³I will punish those who live in Egypt, just as I punished Jerusalem—with war, starvation, and disease. ¹⁴None of the people of Judah who are left and have come to Egypt to live will escape or survive. Not one of them will return to Judah, where they long to live once again. No one will return except a few refugees.”

¹⁵Then all the men who knew that their wives offered sacrifices to other gods, and all the women who were standing there, including the Israelites who lived in southern Egypt—a large crowd in all—said to me, ¹⁶“We refuse to listen to what you have told us in the name of the Lord. ¹⁷We will do everything that we said we would. We will offer sacrifices to our goddess, the Queen of Heaven, and we will pour out wine offerings to her, just as we and our ancestors, our king and our leaders, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Then we had plenty of food, we were prosperous, and had no troubles. ¹⁸But ever since we stopped sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven and stopped pouring out wine offerings to her, we have had nothing, and our people have died in war and of starvation.”

¹⁹And the women added, “When we baked cakes shaped like the Queen of Heaven, offered sacrifices to her, and poured out wine offerings to her, our husbands approved of what we were doing.”

²⁰Then I said to all the men and the women who had answered me in this way, ²¹“As for the sacrifices which you and your ancestors, your kings and your leaders, and the people of the land offered in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem—do you think that the Lord did not know about them or that he forgot them? ²²This very day your land lies in ruins and no one lives in it. It has become a horrifying sight, and people use its name as a curse because the Lord could no longer endure your wicked and evil practices. ²³This present disaster has come on you because you offered sacrifices to other gods and sinned against the Lord by not obeying all his commands.”

^24–25I told all the people, especially the women, what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, was saying to the people of Judah living in Egypt: “Both you and your wives have made solemn promises to the Queen of Heaven. You promised that you would offer sacrifices to her and pour out wine offerings to her, and you have kept your promises. Very well, then! Keep your promises! Carry out your vows! ²⁶But now listen to the vow that I, the Lord, have made in my mighty name to all you Israelites in Egypt: never again will I let any of you use my name to make a vow by saying, ‘I swear by the living Sovereign Lord!’ ²⁷I will see to it that you will not prosper, but will be destroyed. All of you will die, either in war or of disease, until not one of you is left.

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