²⁰ The Lord will send on you curses,^(A) confusion and rebuke^(B) in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin^(C) because of the evil^(D) you have done in forsaking him.^[a]

²⁴ All the nations will ask: “Why has the Lord done this to this land?^(A) Why this fierce, burning anger?”

²⁵ And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt.^(B)

⁴ For they have forsaken^(A) me and made this a place of foreign gods^(B); they have burned incense^(C) in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.^(D)