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word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Now, son of man, will you judge, will you judge this city of bloodshed? Then declare to her all her abominable practices. 3 You are to say: ‘This is what the Lord God says: “O city who sheds blood within, and makes idols to defile herself, your time has come. 4 You have become guilty by the blood that you have shed, and you have become defiled with the idols you have made. You have brought your days to a close, and have come to the end of your years. Therefore, I have made you a disgrace to the nations, and a mockery to all the lands. 5 Those who are near and those who are far away will mock you, O infamous one, full of turmoil.
6 “See how every prince of Israel within you uses his power to shed blood. 7 Father and mother are treated with contempt, and foreign residents in your midst are oppressed. The fatherless and the widow are mistreated in you. 8 You have despised My holy things and profaned My Sabbaths. 9 In you are men who slander in order to shed blood; in you are those who eat at the mountain shrines; within you are those who practice depravity. 10 In you are men who have sexual relations with their father’s wife; in you they violate women during the impurity of their menstrual period. 11 One man within you commits an abomination with his neighbour’s wife; another shamefully defiles his daughter-in-law; and yet another in you violates his sister, his father’s daughter. 12 In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and increase; you make unjust gain from your neighbours by extortion; and you have forgotten Me,” says the Lord God.
13 “Behold, I strike My hands together at the unjust gain you have made, and at the blood you have shed in your midst. 14 Will your courage endure or will your hands remain strong in the days when I will deal with you? I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it. 15 I will scatter you among the nations, and disperse you through the countries; and I will completely remove the uncleanness from you. 16 When you have been profaned in the sight of the nations, then you will know that I am the Lord” ’.”
17 The word of the Lord came to me: 18 “Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me; all of them are copper, tin, iron, and lead left inside the furnace. They have become but the dross from silver. 19 Therefore this is what the Lord God says: ‘Because you have all become dross, behold, I will gather you into Jerusalem. 20 As men gather silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin into the furnace to blow fire on them and melt them; so I will gather you in My anger and in My wrath, and I will place you in the city and melt you. 21 I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of My wrath, and you will be melted inside the city. 22 As silver is melted inside a furnace, so you will be melted inside the city. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have poured out My fury upon you’.”
23 The word of the Lord came to me: 24 “Son of man, say to her: ‘You are a land that is not cleansed, that was not rained upon in the day of indignation’. 25 There is a conspiracy of her prophets within her like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, they take treasure and precious things, and they make many widows within her. 26 Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, nor do they teach the difference between the unclean and the clean. They hide their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. 27 Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood and destroying people in order to get dishonest gain. 28 Her prophets plaster these deeds for them with whitewash by seeing false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘This is what the Lord God says’, when the Lord has not spoken. 29 The people of the land practise extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and wrongfully exploit the foreign resident.
30 “I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall, and stand before Me in the gap on behalf of the land, so I might not destroy it, but I found no one. 31 So I have poured out My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath. I have brought down their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord God.