Yeremia 20:16

20:16 May that man be like the cities ¹ 

that the Lord destroyed without showing any mercy.

May he hear a cry of distress in the morning

and a battle cry at noon.

Amos 4:11

4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God ²  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ³ 

You were like a burning stick ⁴  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

¹ sn The cities alluded to are Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the Jordan plain which had become proverbial for their wickedness and for the destruction that the Lord brought on them because of it. See Isa 1:9-10; 13:19; Jer 23:14; 49:18.

² tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

³ tn Heb “like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The divine name may be used in an idiomatic superlative sense here, in which case one might translate, “like the great [or “disastrous”] overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

sn The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is described in Gen 19:1-29.

⁴ tn Heb “like that which is burning.”