Jeremiah 15:4

Hebrew Bible

2 If they ask you, ‘Where should we go?’ tell them the Lord says this: ‘Those who are destined to die of disease will go to death by disease. Those who are destined to die in war will go to death in war. Those who are destined to die of starvation will go to death by starvation. Those who are destined to go into exile will go into exile.’ 3 “I will punish them in four different ways: I will have war kill them; I will have dogs drag off their dead bodies; I will have birds and wild beasts devour and destroy their corpses. 4 I will make all the people in all the kingdoms of the world horrified at what has happened to them because of what Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem. 5 The Lord cried out, “Who in the world will have pity on you, Jerusalem? Who will grieve over you? Who will stop long enough to inquire about how you are doing? 6 I, the Lord, say: ‘You people have deserted me; you keep turning your back on me.’ So I have unleashed my power against you and have begun to destroy you. I have grown tired of feeling sorry for you!”

2 Kings 23:26

Hebrew Bible

24 Josiah also got rid of the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, the magicians, personal idols, disgusting images, and all the detestable idols that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way he carried out the terms of the law recorded on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the Lord’s temple. 25 No king before or after repented before the Lord as he did, with his whole heart, soul, and being in accordance with the whole law of Moses. 26 Yet the Lord’s great anger against Judah did not subside; he was still infuriated by all the things Manasseh had done. 27 The Lord announced, “I will also spurn Judah, just as I spurned Israel. I will reject this city that I chose—both Jerusalem and the temple, about which I said, ‘I will live there.’” 28 The rest of the events of Josiah’s reign and all his accomplishments are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah.

 Notes and References

"... the number of people who worshiped statues and supernatural beings does not appear to have been large. The book of Judges does not quantify its statements that the Israelites worshiped foreign gods, and the number of specific incidents reported in the book is small. That these incidents were regarded as having such disastrous consequences for Israel is probably not due to their prevalence but to the gravity of the sin and to the biblical doctrine of collective responsibility, which holds the entire nation responsible for the sins of a even a small number of its members. Most of the idolatry reported in Kings was sponsored by the kings themselves, often for political reasons connected with foreign policy; few of these reports indicate that large numbers of common people were involved. (Compare 2 Kings 23:26-27; 24:3; Jeremiah 15:4; Lamentations 5:7; ANET) Archaeological evidence of polytheism is also scant: few, if any, representations of male deities have ever been found in clearly Israelite contexts, and most of the figurines of females found at Israelite sites represent humans, not goddesses ..."

Tigay, Jeffrey H. Deuteronomy: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (p. 434) Jewish Publication Society, 1996

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