Jeremiah 49:19-33

God uses nations and peoples to accomplish His will. It can be for punishment or for protection against an enemy. God is all powerful, all knowing and all seeing. He knows those that are truly His and those that are using Him as a way of appearing to be something that they are not. He will not always tolerate mans arrogance and pride. God protects those are fair, forgiving and walk humbly with Him, knowing that He alone is God!

19 "Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the floodplain of the Jordan

Against the dwelling place of the strong;

But I will suddenly make him run away from her.

And who is a chosen man that I may appoint over her?

For who is like Me?

Who will arraign Me?

And who is that shepherd

Who will withstand Me?"

20 Therefore hear the counsel of the Lord that He has taken against Edom,

And His purposes that He has proposed against the inhabitants of Teman:

Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out;

Surely He shall make their dwelling places desolate with them.

21 The earth shakes at the noise of their fall;

At the cry its noise is heard at the Red Sea.

22 Behold, He shall come up and fly like the eagle,

And spread His wings over Bozrah;

The heart of the mighty men of Edom in that day shall be

Like the heart of a woman in birth pangs.

23 Against Damascus.

"Hamath and Arpad are shamed,

For they have heard bad news.

They are fainthearted;

There is trouble on the sea;

It cannot be quiet.

24 Damascus has grown feeble;

She turns to flee,

And fear has seized her.

Anguish and sorrows have taken her like a woman in labor.

25 Why is the city of praise not deserted, the city of My joy?

26 Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets,

And all the men of war shall be cut off in that day," says the Lord of hosts.

27 "I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus,

And it shall consume the palaces of Ben-Hadad."

28 Against Kedar and against the kingdoms of Hazor, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon shall strike.

Thus says the Lord:

"Arise, go up to Kedar,

And devastate the men of the East!

29 Their tents and their flocks they shall take away.

They shall take for themselves their curtains,

All their vessels and their camels;

And they shall cry out to them,

Fear is on every side!'

30 "Flee, get far away! Dwell in the depths,

O inhabitants of Hazor!" says the Lord.

"For Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has taken counsel against you,

And has conceived a plan against you.

31 "Arise, go up to the wealthy nation that dwells securely," says the Lord,

"Which has neither gates nor bars,

Dwelling alone.

32 Their camels shall be for booty,

And the multitude of their cattle for plunder.

I will scatter to all winds those in the farthest corners,

And I will bring their calamity from all its sides," says the Lord.

33 "Hazor shall be a dwelling for jackals, a desolation forever;

No one shall reside there,

Nor son of man dwell in it."

The NKJV says this: Like the lion that emerges from the thickets along the lower Jordan and seizes its prey, God would attack the Edomites through His appointed instrument. The two things on which Edom most prided itself, its wisdom and its fortresses, would vanish before the judgment of the Lord. As the strongholds collapsed, the earth would quake; its tremors would be felt all the way to the Red Sea. The broad wings of the eagle represent the all-encompassing power of God and His agents of destruction. Hamath and Arpad were major towns located west and north of the capital of Damascus. The region of Kedar was the most important Arab tribal group in the biblical period.