Old/New Testament

² You, son of man, will you put them on trial,^[a] will you put the bloody city on trial? Then list for her all her abominations. ³ Say that this is what the Lord God says.

O city, you shed blood in your midst, and you bring on your time of judgment. You manufacture idols throughout the city, and so you defile yourself. ⁴ Because of the blood you have shed, you have become guilty, and because of the filthy idols you have made, you have become defiled. You have brought near your final days. You have arrived at the end of your years. Therefore, I have made you a disgrace to the nations and subjected you to ridicule among all the countries. ⁵ Those nearby and those far away from you will ridicule you, who are notorious for impurity and full of turmoil.

⁶ Look at the rulers of Israel. Each one among you uses his power to shed blood. ⁷ In your midst, people have dishonored their fathers and mothers. They have exploited the alien in your midst. They have mistreated the fatherless children and the widows among you. ⁸ You have despised my holy things and profaned my Sabbaths. ⁹ Slanderers are present among you to shed blood. In you there are people who eat on the mountains and commit obscene acts in your midst. ¹⁰ In your midst, a man uncovers the nakedness of his mother, who is reserved for his father, and men force themselves on a woman who is unclean during her period. ¹¹ In your midst, a man commits an abomination with a neighbor’s wife. Another man obscenely defiles a daughter-in-law. Another forces himself on his sister, his father’s daughter. ¹² In your midst, they take bribes to shed blood. You deduct a fee from the money you lend to people, and you demand that they repay more than you lent them. In this way you exploit your neighbor by extortion. And you have forgotten me, declares the Lord God.

¹³ Therefore, I clap my hands^[b] against the dishonest profit you have made and over the bloodshed in your midst. ¹⁴ Will your courage endure? Will your hands remain strong in the days when I deal with you? I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will accomplish it. ¹⁵ I will scatter you among the nations. I will disperse you throughout the countries and remove your uncleanness from you. ¹⁶ After you have been defiled in the eyes of the nations, you will know that I am the Lord.

¹⁸ Son of man, the house of Israel has become slag to me. All of them are copper, tin, iron, and lead inside a furnace. They have become the slag from silver. ¹⁹ Therefore, this is what the Lord God says. Because you have all become slag, I am about to gather you inside Jerusalem. ²⁰ As silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin are placed inside a furnace to blast them with fire and to melt them, so I will gather you in my anger and my wrath. I will throw you into the furnace and melt you. ²¹ I will gather you and blast you with the fire of my fury, and you will be melted in the midst of it. ²² As silver is melted inside a furnace, in the same way you will be melted inside the city. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have poured out my wrath upon you.

²⁴ Son of man, say to her, “You are a land not cleansed, a land that receives no rain in the day of rage.”

²⁵ Jerusalem’s princes^[c] within her are like a roaring lion, tearing its prey. They devour people’s lives. They seize treasures and valuables. They make many women widows within her.

²⁶ Her priests do violence to my law by profaning what is holy to me, by not distinguishing between the holy and the common, and by not teaching the difference between the unclean and the clean. They disregard my Sabbaths, with the result that I am profaned among them.

²⁷ Her officials inside her are like wolves, tearing their prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives in order to make dishonest profits.

²⁸ Her prophets daub whitewash for them, seeing empty visions and forecasting false omens for them. They say, “This is what the Lord God says,” when the Lord has not spoken at all.

²⁹ The ordinary citizens practice extortion and commit robbery. They oppress the poor and the needy. They unjustly deprive the alien of his due. ³⁰ I looked for someone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy her, but I found no one. ³¹ Therefore, I will pour out my rage upon them. In the fire of my fury, I will make an end of them. I will bring down their conduct on their own heads, declares the Lord God.

² Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother. ³ They acted like prostitutes in Egypt, where they were prostitutes during their youth. There they let their breasts be fondled. There they let men caress their virgin nipples.^[d]

⁴ The older sister was named Oholah, and her sister was named Oholibah.^[e] They became mine and gave birth to sons and daughters. (As for their names, Samaria is Oholah and Jerusalem is Oholibah.)

⁵ Oholah acted like a prostitute instead of being faithful to me. She lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—bodyguards ⁶ clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, cavalrymen riding horses.^{[f] 7} She bestowed her favors upon all the elite of the Assyrians, and along with all those for whom she lusted, she defiled herself with all their filthy idols. ⁸ She did not give up the whoring she had practiced since Egypt, when men lay down with her during her youth. They caressed her virgin nipples and poured out their lust upon her. ⁹ Therefore, I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, after whom she had lusted. ¹⁰ They exposed her nakedness. They took away her sons and her daughters and killed her with the sword. She became notorious among women because of the punishments they inflicted upon her.

¹¹ Although her sister Oholibah saw this, she behaved even more obscenely and lustfully than her sister, and her lustful whoring was even worse than her sister’s whoring. ¹² She lusted after the Assyrians—governors, commanders, bodyguards in full uniform, and cavalrymen riding horses, all of them desirable young men. ¹³ Then I saw that she too had defiled herself. Both of them had gone the same way. ¹⁴ In fact, Oholibah intensified her whoring by looking at figures of men engraved on the wall, images of Chaldeans incised in bright red, ¹⁵ with belts around their waists and flowing turbans on their heads. All of them looked like elite officers, like Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. ¹⁶ At the mere sight of them she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. ¹⁷ The Babylonians came to her bed to make love, and they defiled her by acting like whores themselves. But after she had been defiled by them, she tore herself away from them in disgust. ¹⁸ Because she had acted like a whore so openly and exposed her nakedness, I tore myself away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister in disgust. ¹⁹ Yet she increased her whoring. She remembered the days of her youth when she acted like a prostitute in the land of Egypt. ²⁰ She lusted after her paramours, whose genitals^[g] were like the genitals of donkeys and whose ejaculation was like the ejaculation of horses. ²¹ So you revisited the lewdness of your youth when your nipples were caressed in Egypt, and your young breasts were fondled.^[h]

²² Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Lord God says. Hear this loud and clear! I am about to rouse your lovers against you, those you had turned away from in disgust. I will bring them against you from all sides: ²³ the sons of the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, desirable young men, governors and commanders all of them, elite officers and men of high rank, all of them riding on horses. ²⁴ They will come against you with weapons, chariots, and wagons, and with a horde of people. With shields, armor,^[i] and helmets they will take up positions against you on all sides.

I will give you up to them for judgment, and they will judge you according to their own standards. ²⁵ I will turn my jealousy against you, and they will deal with you in wrath. They will cut off your nose and your ears, and your survivors will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and your daughters, and your survivors will be devoured by fire. ²⁶ They will strip you of your clothing and take away your beautiful jewelry. ²⁷ I will put an end to your depravity and to the whoring you began in the land of Egypt. You will not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore. ²⁸ For this is what the Lord God says. Listen! I am about to deliver you into the hands of those you hate, into the hands of those you turned away from in disgust. ²⁹ They will treat you hatefully. They will take away everything you have worked for and leave you completely naked. Your whorish nakedness will be exposed. Your depravity and your acts of prostitution ³⁰ have brought those things upon you because of your whoring after the nations, because you defiled yourself with their filthy idols. ³¹ Because you walked in the way of your sister, I will put her cup into your hand.

³² This is what the Lord God says. You will drink your sister’s cup, a cup deep and wide. It will cause you derision and ridicule because it is so full. ³³ You will be filled with drunkenness and grief by the cup of horror and devastation, the cup of your sister Samaria. ³⁴ You will drink it and drain it. You will gnaw its broken pieces and tear your breasts. For I have spoken, declares the Lord God. ³⁵ Therefore, this is what the Lord God says. Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, you yourself must also bear the penalty of your depravity and your whoring.

³⁶ The Lord also said this to me:

Son of man, will you bring charges against Oholah and Oholibah? Make their abominations known to them.

³⁷ They have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. They have committed adultery with their filthy idols. They have even offered up their children, whom they bore for me, to the idols as food.

³⁸ What is more, they have done this to me: They defiled my sanctuary on the same day they desecrated my Sabbaths. ³⁹ When they slaughtered their children for their filthy idols, they entered my sanctuary on that same day to defile it. Just look! This is what they did in my own house.

⁴⁰ They even sent for men to come from far away, men to whom they had sent a messenger, and those men did come.

For them you^[j] bathed. You applied eye shadow and put on your jewelry. ⁴¹ You sat on an expensive couch. In front of it you set a table, on which you placed my incense and my perfumed oil.

⁴² The noise of a carefree crowd surrounded her. In addition to the large throng of all kinds of men, they even brought drunkards^[k] from the desert. They put bracelets on their arms and beautiful crowns on their heads. ⁴³ Then I said about the woman worn out with adulteries, “Let them keep using her as a whore because that is what she is.”^{[l] 44} So they used her the way one uses a whore. So they used Oholah and Oholibah, those depraved women. ⁴⁵ But righteous men will punish them with the punishment due to adulteresses, and the punishment due to murderers, for they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands.

⁴⁶ So this is what the Lord God says. I will bring an army against them and hand them over to terror and plunder. ⁴⁷ The army will stone them and cut them down with their swords. They will slaughter their sons and daughters and burn down their houses with fire.

⁴⁸ In this way I will remove depravity from the land, so that all women may take warning not to act in such a depraved way as you do. ⁴⁹ They will impose upon you the penalty for your depravity, and you will bear the punishment for your sinful worship of your filthy idols. Then you will know that I am the Lord God.