Ezekiel 7-8
Common English Bible
The end
7 The Lord’s word came to me: 2 You, human one, this is what the Lord God proclaims to the land of Israel:
An end! The end has come to the four corners of the earth!
3 Even now the end is upon you!
I’ll send my anger against you,
I’ll judge you according to your ways,
and I’ll turn all your detestable practices against you.
4 I won’t shed a tear for you or show any pity.
Instead, I’ll turn your ways against you,
and your detestable practices will stay with you.
Then you will know that I am the Lord.
5 The Lord God proclaims:
Disaster! A singular disaster! Look, it comes!
6 The end has come! Oh, yes, it has come!
It has come to you! Look, it’s here!
7 You who live on the earth,
you are finally caught in your own trap!
The time has come; the day draws near.
On the hills panic, not glory.
8 And now it’s near!
Against you I will pour out my wrath,
and my anger will be satisfied.
I’ll judge you according to your ways,
and turn all your detestable practices against you.
9 I won’t shed a tear or show any pity
when I turn your ways against you,
and your detestable practices stay with you.
Then you will know that I, the Lord, am the one who strikes you!
10 Look, the day! Look, it comes!
Doom has arrived! The staff blossoms, and pride springs up!
11 Violence rises up as a wicked master.[a]
It isn’t from others or their armies or their violence.
It hasn’t loomed up because of them.
12 The time is coming! The day draws near!
No buyer should rejoice, and no seller should mourn,
because wrath overcomes the whole crowd.
13 The seller will never get back what was sold,
even if both of them survive.
The vision concerns the whole crowd.
It won’t be revoked.
And the guilty ones—
they won’t even be able to hang on to their lives.
14 They have blown the horn,
and everything is ready, but no one goes to battle,
because my wrath overcomes the whole crowd.
15 Outside, the sword! Inside, plague and famine!
Whoever is out in the field will die by the sword.
Whoever is in the city,
plague and famine will consume them.
16 And those who flee?
They will turn up on the hills like valley doves,
all of them moaning, those guilty ones.
17 Every hand will hang limp;
urine will run down every leg.
18 They will put on mourning clothes,
and horror will cover them.
On every face, shame;
on all their heads, baldness.
19 They will hurl their silver into the street,
and their gold will seem unclean.
Their silver and their gold won’t deliver them
on the day of the Lord’s anger.
They won’t satisfy their appetites or fill their bellies.
Their guilt will bring them down.
20 From their beautiful ornament, in which they took pride,
they have made horrible and detestable images!
Therefore, I’ve declared it an unclean thing for them.
21 I’ll hand it over to foreigners as loot taken in war,
to the earth’s wicked ones as plunder—they will defile it!
22 When I hide my face from my people,
foreigners will defile my treasured place.
Violent intruders will invade it; they will defile it!
23 Make a chain!
The earth is full of perverted justice,
the city full of violence.
24 I’ll bring up the cruelest nations,
and they will seize their houses.
I’ll break their proud strength,
and their sanctuaries will be defiled.
25 Disaster! It has come!
They seek peace, but there is none.
26 One disaster comes after another,
and rumor follows rumor.
They seek a vision from the prophet.
Instruction disappears from the priest,
and counsel from the elders.
27 The king will go into mourning,
the prince will clothe himself in despair,
and the hands of the land’s people will tremble.
When I do to them as they have done
and judge them by their own justice,
they will know that I am the Lord.
Temple vision
8 In the sixth year, on the fifth day of the sixth month, I was sitting in my house, and Judah’s elders were sitting with me, when the Lord God’s power overcame me. 2 I looked, and there was a form that looked like fire. Below what looked like his waist was fire, but above his waist it looked like gold, like gleaming amber. 3 He stretched out the form of a hand and picked me up by the hair of my head. A wind lifted me up between earth and heaven, and in a divine vision it brought me to Jerusalem, to the north-facing entrance of the gate to the inner court. That was where the pedestal was for the outrageous image that incites outrage. 4 There I saw the glory of Israel’s God, exactly like what I had seen in the valley. 5 He said to me: Human one, look toward the north. So I looked north, and there, north of the altar gate, was this outrageous image in the entrance. 6 He said to me: Human one, do you see what they are doing, the terribly detestable practices that the house of Israel is doing here that drive me far from my sanctuary? Yet you will see even more detestable practices than these.
7 Then he brought me to the court entrance. When I looked, I saw a hole in the wall. 8 He said to me: Human one, dig through the wall. So I dug through the wall, and I discovered a doorway. 9 And he said to me: Go in and see what wicked and detestable things they are doing in there. 10 So I went in and looked, and I saw every form of loathsome beasts and creeping things and all the idols of the house of Israel engraved on the walls all around. 11 The seventy elders of the house of Israel were standing in front of them, and all of them were holding censers in their hands. Jaazaniah, Shaphan’s son, was standing right there with them, and the scent of the incense cloud rose up. 12 He said to me: Human one, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, every one of them in their rooms full of sculptured images? They say, “The Lord doesn’t see us; the Lord has abandoned the land.” 13 He said to me: You will see them performing even more detestable practices. 14 He brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the temple, where women were sitting and performing the Tammuz lament.
15 He said to me: Human one, do you see? Yet you will see even more detestable practices than these. 16 He brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s temple. There, at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, were twenty-five men facing toward the east with their backs to the Lord’s temple. They were bowing to the sun in the east. 17 He said to me: Do you see, human one? Isn’t it enough that the house of Judah has observed here all these detestable things? They have filled the land with violence, and they continue to provoke my fury. Look at them! They even put the branch to their noses! 18 I will certainly respond with wrath. I won’t spare or pity anyone. Even though they call out loudly to me in my hearing, I won’t listen to them.
Footnotes
- Ezekiel 7:11 Or wicked staff
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible
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