⁷ Then he brought me to the entrance to the courtyard. I looked up and saw a hole in the wall. ⁸ He said to me, “Son of man, dig into the wall.” So I did. And I saw a door there.

⁹ He continued, “Go through it. Look at the evil things they are doing here. I hate those things.” ¹⁰ So I went in and looked. All over the walls were pictures of all kinds of crawling things and “unclean” animals. The Lord hates it when people worship those things. There were also carvings of the gods of the people of Israel. ¹¹ In front of them stood 70 elders of Israel. Jaazaniah was standing there among them. He is the son of Shaphan. Each elder was holding a shallow cup. A sweet-smelling cloud of incense was rising from the cups.

¹² The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of Israel are doing in the dark? Each of them is in his own room worshiping his own god. They say, ‘The Lord doesn’t see us. He has deserted the land.’ ” ¹³ He continued, “You will see them doing things I hate even more.”