Jeremiah 15:3-12
English Standard Version
Chapter 15
3I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. 4And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.
5 "Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will grieve for you? Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?
6 You have rejected me, declares the Lord; you keep going backward, so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you — I am weary of relenting.
7 I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land; I have bereaved them; I have destroyed my people; they did not turn from their ways.
8I have made their widows more in number than the sand of the seas; I have brought against the mothers of young men a destroyer at noonday; I have made anguish and terror fall upon them suddenly.
9 She who bore seven has grown feeble; she has fainted away; her sun went down while it was yet day; she has been shamed and disgraced. And the rest of them I will give to the sword before their enemies, declares the Lord."
10Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me.
11The Lord said, "Have I not set you free for their good? Have I not pleaded for you before the enemy in the time of trouble and in the time of distress?
12Can one break iron, iron from the north, and bronze?
