Ezekiel 5-8

Ezekiel 5

¹“As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword, use it as a barber’s razor, and shave your head and beard. Then take a set of scales and divide the hair.

²When the days of the siege have ended, you are to burn up a third of the hair inside the city; you are also to take a third and slash it with the sword all around the city; and you are to scatter a third to the wind. For I will unleash a sword behind them.

³But you are to take a few strands of hair and secure them in the folds of your garment.

⁴Again, take a few of these, throw them into the fire, and burn them. From there a fire will spread to the whole house of Israel.

⁵This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.

⁶But she has rebelled against My ordinances more wickedly than the nations, and against My statutes worse than the countries around her. For her people have rejected My ordinances and have not walked in My statutes.’

⁷Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘You have been more insubordinate than the nations around you; you have not walked in My statutes or kept My ordinances, nor have you even conformed to the ordinances of the nations around you.’

⁸Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Behold, I Myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations.

⁹Because of all your abominations, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.

¹⁰As a result, fathers among you will eat their sons, and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments against you and scatter all your remnant to every wind.’

¹¹Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable idols and abominations, I Myself will withdraw My favor; I will not look upon you with pity, nor will I spare you.

¹²A third of your people will die by plague or be consumed by famine within you, a third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and a third I will scatter to every wind and unleash a sword behind them.

¹³And when My anger is spent and I have vented My wrath against them, I will be appeased. And when I have spent My wrath on them, they will know that I, the LORD, in My zeal have spoken.

¹⁴I will make you a ruin and a disgrace among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by.

¹⁵So you will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations around you, when I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath, and raging fury. I, the LORD, have spoken.

¹⁶When I shower you with the deadly arrows of famine and destruction that I will send to destroy you, I will intensify the famine against you and cut off your supply of food.

¹⁷I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring a sword against you. I, the LORD, have spoken.”

Ezekiel 6

¹And the word of the LORD came to me, saying,

²“Son of man, set your face against the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them.

³You are to say: ‘O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD! This is what the Lord GOD says to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys: I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places.

⁴Your altars will be demolished and your incense altars will be smashed; and I will cast down your slain before your idols.

⁵I will lay the corpses of the Israelites before their idols and scatter your bones around your altars.

⁶Wherever you live, the cities will be laid waste and the high places will be demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and desecrated, your idols smashed and obliterated, your incense altars cut down, and your works blotted out.

⁷The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am the LORD.

⁸Yet I will leave a remnant, for some of you will escape the sword when you are scattered among the nations and throughout the lands.

⁹Then in the nations to which they have been carried captive, your survivors will remember Me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts that turned away from Me, and by their eyes that lusted after idols. So they will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their abominations.

¹⁰And they will know that I am the LORD; I did not declare in vain that I would bring this calamity upon them.

¹¹This is what the Lord GOD says: Clap your hands, stomp your feet, and cry out “Alas!” because of all the wicked abominations of the house of Israel, who will fall by sword and famine and plague.

¹²He who is far off will die by the plague, he who is near will fall by the sword, and he who remains will die by famine. So I will vent My fury upon them.

¹³Then you will know that I am the LORD, when their slain lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, and under every green tree and leafy oak—the places where they offered fragrant incense to all their idols.

¹⁴I will stretch out My hand against them, and wherever they live I will make the land a desolate waste, from the wilderness to Diblah. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’”

Ezekiel 7

¹And the word of the LORD came to me, saying,

²“O son of man, this is what the Lord GOD says to the land of Israel: ‘The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land.

³The end is now upon you, and I will unleash My anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and repay you for all your abominations.

⁴I will not look on you with pity, nor will I spare you, but I will punish you for your ways and for the abominations among you. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’

⁵This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Disaster! An unprecedented disaster—behold, it is coming!

⁶The end has come! The end has come! It has roused itself against you. Behold, it has come!

⁷Doom has come to you, O inhabitants of the land. The time has come; the day is near; there is panic on the mountains instead of shouts of joy.

⁸Very soon I will pour out My wrath upon you and vent My anger against you; I will judge you according to your ways and repay you for all your abominations.

⁹I will not look on you with pity, nor will I spare you, but I will punish you for your ways and for the abominations among you. Then you will know that it is I, the LORD, who strikes the blow.

¹⁰Behold, the day is here! It has come! Doom has gone out, the rod has budded, arrogance has bloomed.

¹¹Their violence has grown into a rod to punish their wickedness. None of them will remain: none of their multitude, none of their wealth, and nothing of value.

¹²The time has come; the day has arrived. Let the buyer not rejoice and the seller not mourn, for wrath is upon the whole multitude.

¹³The seller will surely not recover what he sold while both remain alive. For the vision concerning the whole multitude will not be revoked, and because of their iniquity, not one of them will preserve his life.

¹⁴They have blown the trumpet and made everything ready, but no one goes to war, for My wrath is upon the whole multitude.

¹⁵The sword is outside; plague and famine are within. Those in the country will die by the sword, and those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague.

¹⁶The survivors will escape and live in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valley, each for his own iniquity.

¹⁷Every hand will go limp, and every knee will turn to water.

¹⁸They will put on sackcloth, and terror will overwhelm them. Shame will cover all their faces, and all their heads will be shaved.

¹⁹They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will seem unclean. Their silver and gold cannot save them in the day of the wrath of the LORD. They cannot satisfy their appetites or fill their stomachs with wealth, for it became the stumbling block that brought their iniquity.

²⁰His beautiful ornaments they transformed into pride and used them to fashion their vile images and detestable idols. Therefore I will make these into something unclean for them.

²¹And I will hand these things over as plunder to foreigners and loot to the wicked of the earth, who will defile them.

²²I will turn My face away from them, and they will defile My treasured place. Violent men will enter it, and they will defile it.

²³Forge the chain, for the land is full of crimes of bloodshed, and the city is full of violence.

²⁴So I will bring the most wicked of nations to take possession of their houses. I will end the pride of the mighty, and their holy places will be profaned.

²⁵Anguish is coming! They will seek peace, but find none.

²⁶Disaster upon disaster will come, and rumor after rumor. Then they will seek a vision from a prophet, but instruction from the priests will perish, as will counsel from the elders.

²⁷The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and I will judge them by their own standards. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’”

Ezekiel 8

¹In the sixth year, on the fifth day of the sixth month, I was sitting in my house, and the elders of Judah were sitting before me; and there the hand of the Lord GOD fell upon me.

²Then I looked and saw a figure like that of a man. From His waist down His appearance was like fire, and from His waist up He was as bright as the gleam of amber.

³He stretched out what looked like a hand and took me by the hair of my head. Then the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and carried me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the idol that provokes jealousy was seated.

⁴And there I saw the glory of the God of Israel, like the vision I had seen in the plain.

⁵“Son of man,” He said to me, “now lift up your eyes to the north.” So I lifted up my eyes to the north, and in the entrance north of the Altar Gate I saw this idol of jealousy.

⁶“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what they are doing—the great abominations that the house of Israel is committing—to drive Me far from My sanctuary? Yet you will see even greater abominations.”

⁷Then He brought me to the entrance to the court, and I looked and saw a hole in the wall.

⁸“Son of man,” He told me, “dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall and discovered a doorway.

⁹Then He said to me, “Go in and see the wicked abominations they are committing here.”

¹⁰So I went in and looked, and engraved all around the wall was every kind of crawling creature and detestable beast, along with all the idols of the house of Israel.

¹¹Before them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising.

¹²“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are saying, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.’”

¹³Again, He told me, “You will see them committing even greater abominations.”

¹⁴Then He brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the LORD, and I saw women sitting there, weeping for Tammuz.

¹⁵“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Yet you will see even greater abominations than these.”

¹⁶So He brought me to the inner court of the house of the LORD, and there at the entrance to the temple of the LORD, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east; and they were bowing to the east in worship of the sun.

¹⁷“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they must also fill the land with violence and continually provoke Me to anger? Look, they are even putting the branch to their nose!

¹⁸Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.”