Ezekiel

22 And Jehovah’s word came to me 2* “And as for you, man, go into court, go into court with the bloody city, and let them know all their abominable doings, 3* and say ‘Says the Lord Jehovah, You city that shed blood within you to have your time come, and that made fetishes to put defilement on yourself, 4 by your blood that you have shed you are under penalty and by your fetishes that you have made you are defiled, and you have brought your days near and the time of your years has come; therefore I have given you to be a taunt for the nations and a gibe for all countries. 5 The countries near you and far from you shall gibe at you, you of the defiled name, of the great uproar. 6* There have the princes of Israel been each playing his own game in you so as to set blood streaming. 7 Father and mother they have treated disrespectfully in you; with the immigrant they have dealt high-handedly within you; for orphan and widow they have made it hard in you. 8 My sacred things you have despised and my sabbaths you have profaned. 9* Informers there have been in you to have blood shed, and they have eaten on the mountains in you. Lewdness they have committed within you: 10 a father’s nakedness has been uncovered in you, a woman unclean by menstruation they have deflowered in you, 11 and a man has committed an abomination with another’s wife, and a man has defiled his daughter-in-law in lewdness, and a man has deflowered his sister, his father’s daughter, in you. 12 Bribes they have taken in you to have blood shed; interest and bonus you have taken, and exploited your fellowman high-handedly, and forgotten me, quoth the Lord Jehovah; 13 but here I have slapped my hand on your exploitation that you have practiced and on your blood that you have within you. 14 Will your heart stand firm or your hands be strong for the days that I deal with you? I Jehovah have spoken and will act, 15 and I will scatter you among the nations and sprinkle you through the countries, and clear out your uncleanness out of you, 16* and be desecrated in you before heathen eyes; and you shall know that I am Jehovah.’”

17 And Jehovah’s word came to me 18** “Man, the house of Israel have become dross to me; all of them are copper and tin and iron and lead within a silver-furnace; dross they are. 19* So the Lord Jehovah says, Since you have all become dross, therefore I am gathering you inside Jerusalem 20 as silver and copper and iron and lead and tin are gathered inside a furnace to have a fire blown up against it for melting; 21 so I will gather in my anger and ire and lay and melt you and concentrate you and blow the fire of my wrath against you, and you shall be melted within it. 22 As silver melts within a furnace, so you shall be melted within it, and you shall know it was I Jehovah that poured my ire out upon you.”

23 And Jehovah’s word came to me 24* “Man, say to it ‘You are a country not cleansed nor showered in a day of disfavor, 25 in whose midst its princes are like a roaring lion tearing prey—they eat lives, they take fortunes and treasures, they make its widows many within it; 26 whose priests do violence to my code and profane my sacred things, do not discriminate between sacred and secular nor diagnose between unclean and clean, and ignore my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them; 27* in whose heart its generals are like wolves tearing prey, with their shedding blood, throwing away lives in order to grab pelf; 28 and whose prophets plaster their work flat, visioning unmeaning things and soothsaying falsehoods for them, saying “the Lord Jehovah says” when Jehovah has not spoken; 29 the populace bilk and steal and ill-use a needy and unfortunate man and illegally deny justice to the immigrant. 30 And I looked among them for a man that would build a fence and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the country, not to have it made away with, and did not find any; 31 and I poured out my hostility on them, finished them off with the fire of my wrath, brought their course down on their own heads, quoth the Lord Jehovah.’”