48
you'll have to serve your enemies whom God will send against you. Life will be famine and drought, rags and wretchedness; then he'll put an iron yoke on your neck until he's destroyed you.
49
Yes, God will raise up a faraway nation against you, swooping down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you can't understand,
50
a mean-faced people, cruel to grandmothers and babies alike.
51
They'll ravage the young of your animals and the crops from your fields until you're destroyed. They'll leave nothing behind: no grain, no wine, no oil, no calves, no lambs - and finally, no you.
52
They'll lay siege to you while you're huddled behind your town gates. They'll knock those high, proud walls flat, those walls behind which you felt so safe. They'll lay siege to your fortified cities all over the country, this country that God, your God, has given you.
53
And you'll end up cannibalizing your own sons and daughters that God, your God, has given you. When the suffering from the siege gets extreme, you're going to eat your own babies.
54
The most gentle and caring man among you will turn hard, his eye evil, against his own brother, his cherished wife, and even the rest of his children who are still alive,
55
refusing to share with them a scrap of meat from the cannibal child-stew he is eating. He's lost everything, even his humanity, in the suffering of the siege that your enemy mounts against your fortified towns.
56
And the most gentle and caring woman among you, a woman who wouldn't step on a wildflower, will turn hard, her eye evil, against her cherished husband, against her son, against her daughter,
57
against even the afterbirth of her newborn infants; she plans to eat them in secret - she does eat them! - because she has lost everything, even her humanity, in the suffering of the siege that your enemy mounts against your fortified towns.
58
If you don't diligently keep all the words of this Revelation written in this book, living in holy awe before This Name glorious and terrible, God, your God,