They cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes; they sold girls for wine to drink. “Now what have you against me, Tyre and Sidon and all you regions of Philistia? Are you repaying me for something I have done? If you are paying me back, I will swiftly and speedily return on your own heads what you have done. For you took my silver and my gold and carried off my finest treasures to your temples. You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, that you might send them far from their homeland. “See, I am going to rouse them out of the places to which you sold them, and I will return on your own heads what you have done. I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away.” The Lord has spoken.

Here we see God judging the evil from the very people he was enabling to judge his people, Israel. God does use evil rulers and people for his purposes. However, their evil is always judged in the end, unless they repent like the Ninevites.

Here we see a description of the evil these foreign nations perpetrated on the Israelites: 1) They played dice games to sell them as slaves, 2) they treated the boys as prostitutes in homosexual acts, and 3) they sold the girls for wine to drink. Their evil was horrid — harming boys and girls sexually, for sport or food. Drunken anger and orgies are implied here. Their evil is boundless and they care not about human life. They are basically like wild animals.

They uprooted the Israelites and sent them to far off places. This relocation strategy is a tactic of conquering nations back then that tried to disable them from reuniting, and causing an uprising. These nations include the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Romans.

They also took the treasures of Jerusalem. When reading this, it sounds like this was a process over time. They did not fully conquer the Israelites because they repented. But they must have won some battles, and captured some of the towns or cities and their people.

So God promised to revisit their atrocities upon their heads. He also promised to reunite his people in their homeland, bring them in from the foreign lands where they were sold into slavery. Finally, he promised to make their captors into their slaves.

We find this last promise duplicated in Psalm 110:1-2: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, ‘Rule in the midst of your enemies!’” In this case it foreshadows the coming of Jesus the Messiah. And it identifies him on equal ground as God the Father (“The Lord says to my Lord”).

God is a God of justice and a God of long-term plans. He allows foreshadowing and prophecy to repeat and predict his actions. He is consistent in his approach to rewarding righteousness and judging selfishness and evil.

I can trust God to also make my enemies into a footstool for me, if I actively surrender to his Lordship in my life.

Lord, thank you for this powerful passage declaring your mighty righteous acts. You do care about justice, and you will reward the faithfulness of your people. I can bank on it!