Ezekiel 6–38

Chapter 6

¹The word of the Lord came to me: ²“Son of man, 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: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. ⁴Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense altars shall be broken; and I will cast down your slain before your idols. ⁵And I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars. ⁶Wherever you dwell your cities shall be waste and your high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out. ⁷And the slain shall fall in the midst of you, and you shall know that I am the Lord.

⁸“Yet I will leave some of you alive. When you have among the nations some who escape the sword, and when you are scattered through the countries, ⁹then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, when I have broken their wanton heart which has departed from me, and blinded their eyes which turn wantonly after their idols; and they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils which they have committed, for all their abominations. ¹⁰And they shall know that I am the Lord; I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them.”

¹¹Thus says the Lord GOD: “Clap your hands, and stamp your foot, and say, Alas! because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel; for they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. ¹²He that is far off shall die of pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword; and he that is left and is preserved shall die of famine. Thus I will spend my fury upon them. ¹³And you shall know that I am the Lord, when their slain lie among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, on all the mountain tops, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing odor to all their idols. ¹⁴And I will stretch out my hand against them, and make the land desolate and waste, throughout all their habitations, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”

Chapter 7

¹The word of the Lord came to me: ²“And you, O son of man, 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, and I will let loose my anger upon you, and will judge you according to your ways; and I will punish you for all your abominations. ⁴And my eye will not spare you, nor will I have pity; but I will punish you for your ways, while your abominations are in your midst. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

⁵“Thus says the Lord GOD: Disaster after disaster! Behold, it comes. ⁶An end has come, the end has come; it has awakened against you. Behold, it comes. ⁷Your doom has come to you, O inhabitant of the land; the time has come, the day is near, a day of tumult, and not of joyful shouting upon the mountains. ⁸Now I will soon pour out my wrath upon you, and spend my anger against you, and judge you according to your ways; and I will punish you for all your abominations. ⁹And my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; I will punish you according to your ways, while your abominations are in your midst. Then you will know that I am the Lord, who smite.

¹⁰“Behold, the day! Behold, it comes! Your doom has come, injustice has blossomed, pride has budded. ¹¹Violence has grown up into a rod of wickedness; none of them shall remain, nor their abundance, nor their wealth; neither shall there be preeminence among them. 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 seller shall not return to what he has sold, while they live. For wrath is upon all their multitude; it shall not turn back; and because of his iniquity, none can maintain his life.

¹⁴“They have blown the trumpet and made all ready; but none goes to battle, for my wrath is upon all their multitude. ¹⁵The sword is without, pestilence and famine are within; he that is in the field dies by the sword; and him that is in the city famine and pestilence devour. ¹⁶And if any survivors escape, they will be on the mountains, like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, every one over his iniquity. ¹⁷All hands are feeble, and all knees weak as water. ¹⁸They gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror covers them; shame is upon all faces, and baldness on all their heads. ¹⁹They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing; their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. ²⁰Their beautiful ornament they used for vainglory, and they made their abominable images and their detestable things of it; therefore I will make it an unclean thing to them. ²¹And I will give it into the hands of foreigners for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall profane it. ²²I will turn my face from them, that they may profane my precious place; robbers shall enter and profane it, ²³and make a desolation. “Because the land is full of bloody crimes and 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 their proud might, 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 seek a vision from the prophet, but the law perishes from the priest, and counsel from the elders. ²⁷The king mourns, the prince is wrapped in despair, and the hands of the people of the land are palsied by terror. According to their way I will do to them, and according to their own judgments I will judge them; and they shall know that I am the Lord.”

Chapter 8

¹In 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 there upon me. ²Then I beheld, and, lo, a form that had the appearance of a man; below what appeared to be his loins it was fire, and above his loins it was like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming bronze. ³He put forth 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, where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy. ⁴And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the plain.

⁵Then he said to me, “Son of man, lift up your eyes now in the direction of the north.” So I lifted up my eyes toward the north, and behold, north of the altar gate, in the entrance, was this image of jealousy. ⁶And he said to me, “Son of man, 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? But you will see still greater abominations.”

⁷And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. ⁸Then said he to me, “Son of man, dig in the wall”; and when I dug in the wall, lo, there was a door. ⁹And he said to me, “Go in, and see the vile abominations that they are committing here.” ¹⁰So I went in and saw; and there, portrayed upon the wall round about, were all kinds of creeping things, and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel. ¹¹And before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Ja-azaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the smoke of the cloud of incense went up. ¹²Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, every man in his room of pictures? 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 which they commit.”

¹⁴Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. ¹⁵Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these.”

¹⁶And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord; and behold, at the door 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, worshiping the sun toward the east. ¹⁷Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too slight a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence, and provoke me further to anger? Lo, they put the branch to their nose. ¹⁸Therefore I will deal in wrath; my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.”

Chapter 9

¹Then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, “Draw near, you executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.” ²And lo, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, every man with his weapon for slaughter in his hand, and with them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing case at his side. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

³Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherubim on which it rested to the threshold of the house; and he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his side. ⁴And the Lord said to him, “Go…