Ezekiel 6:1–38:23

Judgment on Idolatrous Israel

⁶The word of the Lord came to me: ²O mortal, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them ³and say: You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God! Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: I, I myself, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places.^{* 4}Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense stands shall be broken, and I will throw down your slain in front of your idols.^{* 5}I will lay the corpses of the people of Israel in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. ⁶Wherever you live, your towns shall be waste and your high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined,^o your idols broken and destroyed, your incense stands cut down, and your works wiped out.^{* 7}The slain shall fall in your midst; then you shall know that I am the Lord.^*

⁸But I will spare some. Some of you shall escape the sword among the nations and be scattered through the countries.^{* 9}Your survivors shall remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I was crushed by their wanton heart that turned away from me and their wanton eyes that turned after their idols. Then they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed, for all their abominations.^{* 10}And they shall know that I am the Lord; I did not threaten in vain to bring this disaster upon them.

¹¹Thus says the Lord God: Strike your hands together and stamp your foot and say Alas! for all the vile abominations of the house of Israel. For they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.^{* 12}Those far off shall die of pestilence, those nearby shall fall by the sword, and any who are left and are spared shall die of famine. Thus I will spend my fury upon them.^{* 13}And you shall know that I am the Lord when their slain lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing odor to all their idols.^{* 14}I will stretch out my hand against them and make the land desolate and waste, throughout all their settlements, from the wilderness to Riblah.^p Then they shall know that I am the Lord.^*

Impending Disaster

⁷The word of the Lord came to me: ²You, O mortal, thus says the Lord God to the land of Israel:

An end! The end has come

upon the four corners of the land.^*

³Now the end is upon you;

I will let loose my anger upon you;

I will judge you according to your ways;

I will punish you for all your abominations.

⁴My eye will not spare you; I will have no pity.

I will punish you for your ways

while your abominations are among you.

Then you shall know that I am the Lord.^*

⁵Thus says the Lord God:

Disaster after disaster! See, it comes.^*

⁶An end has come; the end has come.

It has awakened against you; see, it comes!

⁷Your doom^q has come to you,

O inhabitant of the land.

The time has come; the day is near—

of tumult, not of reveling on the mountains.^*

⁸Soon now I will pour out my wrath upon you;

I will spend my anger against you.

I will judge you according to your ways

and punish you for all your abominations.^*

⁹My eye will not spare; I will have no pity.

I will punish you according to your ways

while your abominations are among you.

Then you shall know that it is I the Lord who strike.

¹⁰See, the day! See, it comes!

Your doom^r has gone out.

The rod has blossomed; pride has budded.

¹¹Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness.

None of them shall remain,

not their abundance, not their wealth;

no preeminence among them.^s*

¹²The time has come; the day draws near;

let not the buyer rejoice nor the seller mourn,

for wrath is upon all their multitude.

¹³For the sellers shall not return to what has been sold as long as they remain alive. For the vision concerns all their multitude; it shall not be revoked. Because of their iniquity, they cannot maintain their lives.^t

¹⁴They have blown the horn and made everything ready,

but no one goes to battle,

for my wrath is upon all their multitude.

¹⁵The sword is outside; pestilence and famine are inside;

those in the field die by the sword;

those in the city—famine and pestilence devour them.^*

¹⁶If any survivors escape,

they shall be found on the mountains

like doves of the valleys,

all of them moaning over their iniquity.^*

¹⁷All hands shall grow feeble,

all knees turn to water.^*

¹⁸They shall put on sackcloth;

horror shall cover them.

Shame shall be on all faces,

baldness on all their heads.^*

¹⁹They shall fling their silver into the streets;

their gold shall be treated as unclean.

Their silver and gold cannot save them on the day of the wrath of the Lord. They shall not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity.^{* 20}From their^u beautiful ornament, in which they took pride, they made their abominable images, their detestable things; therefore I will make of it an unclean thing to them.^*

²¹I will hand it over to strangers as plunder,

to the wicked of the earth as spoil;

they shall profane it.^*

²²I will avert my face from them

so that they may profane my treasured^v place;

the violent shall enter it;

they shall profane it.^*

²³Make a chain!^w

For the land is full of bloody crimes;

the city is full of violence.^*

²⁴I will bring the worst of the nations

to take possession of their houses.

I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong,

and their holy places shall be profaned.^*

²⁵When anguish comes, they will seek peace,

but there shall be none.^*

²⁶Disaster comes upon disaster;

rumor follows rumor;

they shall keep seeking a vision from the prophet;

instruction shall perish from the priest

and counsel from the elders.^*

²⁷The king shall mourn,

the prince shall be wrapped in despair,

and the hands of the people of the land shall tremble.

According to their way I will deal with them;

according to their own judgments I will judge them.

And they shall know that I am the Lord.^*

Abominations in the Temple

⁸In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, the hand of the Lord God fell upon me there.^{* 2}I looked, and there was a figure that looked like a man;^x below what appeared to be its loins the figure was fire, and above the loins it was like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming amber.^{* 3}It stretched out the form of a hand and took me by a lock of my head, and the spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the gateway of the inner court that faces north, to the seat of the image of jealousy that provokes to jealousy.^{* 4}And the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I had seen in the valley.^*

⁵Then God^y said to me, “O mortal, lift up your eyes now in the direction of the north.” So I lifted up my eyes toward the north, and there, north of the altar gate, in the entrance, was this image of jealousy.^{* 6}He said to me, “Mortal, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary? Yet you will see still greater abominations.”^*

⁷And he brought me to the entrance of the court; I looked, and there was a hole in the wall. ⁸Then he said to me, “Mortal, dig through the wall,” and when I dug through the wall, there was an entrance. ⁹He said to me, “Go in and see the vile abominations that they are committing here.” ¹⁰So I went in and looked; there, portrayed on the wall all around, were all kinds of creeping things and loathsome animals and all the idols of the house of Israel.^{* 11}Before them stood seventy of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the fragrant cloud of incense was ascending.^{* 12}Then he said to me, “Mortal, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of images? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’ ” ¹³He said also to me, “You will see still greater abominations that they are committing.”^*

¹⁴Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord; women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.^{* 15}Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, O mortal? You will see still greater abominations than these.”

¹⁶And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord; there, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, prostrating themselves to the sun toward the east.^{* 17}Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, O mortal? Is it not bad enough that the house of Judah commits the abominations done here? Must they fill the land with violence and provoke my anger still further? See, they are putting the branch to their nose!^{* 18}Therefore I will act in wrath; my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity, and though they cry in my hearing with a loud voice, I will not listen to them.”^*

The Slaughter of the Idolaters

⁹Then he cried in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, “Draw near, you executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.” ²And six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand; among them was a man clothed in linen with a writing case at his side. They went in and stood beside the bronze altar.^*

³Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the entryway of the temple. The Lord^z called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing case at his side^{* 4}and said to him, “Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.”…