Ezekiel 11

¹ The spirit lifted me up and carried me to the east gate of the Temple of Yahweh, the gate that looks eastwards. There at the entrance to the gate stood twenty-five men, among whom I saw Jaazaniah son of Azzur and Pelatiah son of Benaiah, leaders of the people.

² Yahweh said, ‘Son of man, these are the wicked schemers who are spreading their bad advice through this city.

³ They say, “Shall we not soon be building houses? Here is the cooking pot and we are the meat.”[*a]

⁴ Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, son of man.’

⁵ The spirit of Yahweh fell on me, and he said to me, ‘Say, “Yahweh says this: I know what you are saying, House of Israel, I know how insolent you are.

⁶ You have filled this city with more and more corpses of murdered men, you have strewn its streets with your victims.

⁷ And so, the Lord Yahweh says this: The corpses you have thrown into it are the meat, and the city is the cooking pot; but I mean to drive you out.

⁸ You are afraid of the sword and I will summon it against you – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.

⁹ I shall drive you from the city and hand you over to foreigners, and I shall carry out my sentence on you;

¹⁰ you will fall by the sword on the soil of Israel; I shall execute justice on you; and so you will learn that I am Yahweh.

¹¹ This city will be no cooking pot for you, and you will never be the meat inside; I am going to execute justice on you on the soil of Israel;

¹² and so you will learn that I am Yahweh, whose laws you have not obeyed and whose observances you have not kept; instead, you have adopted the manners of the nations round you.”‘

¹³ Now as I was prophesying, Pelatiah son of Benaiah dropped dead. I prostrated myself and cried aloud, ‘Ah, Lord Yahweh, are you going to wipe out all that is left of Israel?’

¹⁴ The word of Yahweh was then addressed to me as follows,

¹⁵ ‘Son of man, your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole House of Israel, these are told by the citizens of Jerusalem, “You have been sent away from Yahweh; it is to us that the land was given as our domain”.

¹⁶ Say therefore, “The Lord Yahweh says this: Yes, I have sent them far away among the nations and I have dispersed them to foreign countries; and for a while I have been a sanctuary for them in the country to which they have gone”.

¹⁷ Then say, “The Lord Yahweh says this: I will gather you together from the peoples, I will bring you all back from the countries where you have been scattered and I will give you the land of Israel. They will come and will purge it of all the horrors and the filthy practices

¹⁸ I will give them a single heart and I will put a new spirit in them;

¹⁹ I will remove the heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh instead,

²⁰ so that they will keep my laws and respect my observances and put them into practice. Then they shall be my people and I will be their God.

²¹ But those whose hearts are set on their idols and their filthy practices I will call to account for their conduct – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.”‘

²² The cherubs then spread their wings and the wheels began to move with them, while the glory of the God of Israel hovered over them.

²³ And the glory of Yahweh rose to leave the city and paused on the mountain to the east of the city.

²⁴ The spirit lifted me up in vision, in the spirit of God, and took me to the Chaldaeans, away to the exiles, and so the vision I had seen faded;

²⁵ and then I told the exiles everything that Yahweh had shown me.