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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.
³ Now 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.
⁴ My 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.

5 Thus says the Lord God:
Disaster after disaster! See, it comes.
⁶   An end has come, the end has come.
It has awakened against you; see, it comes!
⁷ Your doom^* has come to you,
   O inhabitant of the land.
The time has come, the day is near—
   of tumult, not of revelling on the mountains.
⁸ Soon 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.
⁹ My 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.
¹⁰ See, the day! See, it comes!
   Your doom^* has gone out.
The rod has blossomed, pride has budded.
¹¹   Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness.
None of them shall remain,
   not their abundance, not their wealth;
   no pre-eminence among them.^*
12 The 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.^*
14 They have blown the horn and made everything ready;
   but no one goes to battle,
   for my wrath is upon all their multitude.
¹⁵ The 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.
¹⁶ If any survivors escape,
   they shall be found on the mountains
   like doves of the valleys,
all of them moaning over their iniquity.
¹⁷ All hands shall grow feeble,
   all knees turn to water.
¹⁸ They shall put on sackcloth,
   horror shall cover them.
Shame shall be on all faces,
   baldness on all their heads.
¹⁹ They 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. ²⁰From their^* 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.
²¹ I will hand it over to strangers as booty,
   to the wicked of the earth as plunder;
   they shall profane it.
²² I will avert my face from them,
   so that they may profane my treasured^* place;
the violent shall enter it,
   they shall profane it.
²³ Make a chain!^*
For the land is full of bloody crimes;
   the city is full of violence.
²⁴ I 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.
²⁵ When anguish comes, they will seek peace,
   but there shall be none.
²⁶ Disaster comes upon disaster,
   rumour follows rumour;
they shall keep seeking a vision from the prophet;
   instruction shall perish from the priest,
   and counsel from the elders.
²⁷ The 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 judgements 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. ²I looked, and there was a figure that looked like a human being;^* below what appeared to be its loins it was fire, and above the loins it was like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming amber. ³It 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, which provokes to jealousy. ⁴And the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I had seen in the valley.

5 Then God^* said to me, ‘O mortal, lift up your eyes now in the direction of the north.’ So I lifted up my eyes towards the north, and there, north of the altar gate, in the entrance, was this image of jealousy. ⁶He 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.’

7 And 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 round, were all kinds of creeping things, and loathsome animals, and all the idols of the house of Israel. ¹¹Before 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. ¹²Then 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.’

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

16 And 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 towards the east, prostrating themselves to the sun towards the east. ¹⁷Then 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! ¹⁸Therefore 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.’