‘For thus says the Lord Yahweh, “How much more when I send my four sore judgments on Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the dangerous wild beasts, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast?” '
The general principle having been stated it was now applied to Jerusalem. If other lands could be so judged, how much more sinful Jerusalem. The judgments previously described are now seen as ‘the four sore judgments of Yahweh'. ‘Four' regularly indicates the whole known world. It is the number of those outside the covenant. Thus Jerusalem is numbered among them as an outcast.
All these judgments were a regular part of an invasion. The sword to slay, the famine resulting from the burning of the crops or from siege, the wild beasts taking over because of the desolating of the land and the removal of the inhabitants, and the pestilence following from the conditions under which men had to survive. Note the continual stress on the depth of the judgments, cutting off from it man and beast.