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Ezekiel 16
Ezek
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Chapter 16
An allegorical history of Israel
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The word of Yahweh was addressed to me as follows,
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‘Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her filthy crimes.
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Say, “The Lord Yahweh says this: By origin and birth you belong to the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.
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At birth, the very day you were born, there was no one to cut your navel-string, or wash you in cleansing water, or rub you with salt, or wrap you in napkins.
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No one leaned kindly over you to do anything like that for you. You were exposed in the open fields; you were as unloved as that on the day you were born.
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I saw you struggling in your blood as I was passing, and I said to you as you lay in your blood: Live,
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and grow like the grass of the fields. You developed, you grew, you reached marriageable age. Your breasts and your hair both grew, but you were quite naked.
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Then I saw you as I was passing. Your time had come, the time for love. I spread part of my cloak over you and covered your nakedness; I bound myself by oath, I made a covenant with you – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks – and you became mine.
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I bathed you in water, I washed the blood off you, I anointed you with oil.
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I gave you embroidered dresses, fine leather shoes, a linen headband and a cloak of silk.
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I loaded you with jewels, gave you bracelets for your wrists and a necklace for your throat.
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I gave you nose-ring and earrings; I put a beautiful diadem on your head.
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You were loaded with gold and silver, and dressed in fine linen and embroidered silks. Your food was the finest flour, honey and oil. You grew more and more beautiful; and you rose to be queen.
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The fame of your beauty spread through the nations, since it was perfect, because I had clothed you with my own splendour – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.
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You have become infatuated with your own beauty; you have used your fame to make yourself a prostitute; you have offered your services to all comers…
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You have taken your clothes to brighten your high places and there you have played the whore…
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You have taken my presents of gold and silver jewellery and made yourself human images to use in your whorings.
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You have taken your embroidered clothes and put them on the images, and the oil and incense which are rightly mine you have offered to them.
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The bread I gave you, the finest flour, oil and honey with which I used to feed you, you have now offered to them as an appeasing fragrance.
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You have even – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks – taken the sons and daughters you bore me and sacrificed them as food to the images. Was it not enough for you just to be a whore?
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You have slaughtered my children and handed them over as a burnt offering to them,
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and in all your filthy practices and your whorings you have never remembered your youth or the time when you were quite naked and struggling in your own blood.
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To crown your wickedness – trouble for you, it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks –
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you have built yourself a mound and made a high place at every cross-roads.
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At the beginning of every road you have built a high place to defile your beauty there and to give your body to every comer; you have piled whoring on whoring.
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You have lain down for those big-membered neighbours, the Egyptians; you have piled whoring on whoring to provoke me,
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and now I have raised my hand against you. I have rationed your food, I have handed you over to the mercy of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who are sick of your filthy ways.
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Still unsatisfied, you have prostituted yourself to the Assyrians; you have played the whore and not been satisfied even then.[*a]
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You have piled whoring on whoring with Canaanite and Chaldaean, and even then not been satisfied.
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How easily led you were – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks – to behave no better than a bold-faced whore!
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When you built yourself a mound at the beginning of every road and made a high place at every crossroads, you were not, like the whore, out for money:
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an adulteress welcomes strangers instead of her husband;
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a prostitute is paid. But you, in your whoring, have given your presents away to all your lovers; you have offered them gifts to attract them from everywhere.
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In your whoring you have done the exact opposite from other women; no one was running after you, so you went and paid them; they did not pay you since your behaviour was so outrageous.
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Well then, whore, hear the word of Yahweh.
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The Lord Yahweh says this: For having undressed and let yourself be seen naked while whoring with your lovers and with your filthy idols, and for giving them your children’s blood –
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for all this, I am going to band together all the lovers who have pleasured you, both those you liked and those you disliked, I am going to band them together against you from all around; I will strip you in front of them, and let them see you naked.
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And I mean to punish you like women who commit adultery and murder;
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I intend to hand you over to fury and jealousy; I will hand you over to them; they will level your mound and demolish your high places; they will tear your clothes off, take your jewels and leave you completely naked.
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They will then whip up the crowd against you; you will be stoned and run through with a sword;
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they will set your houses on fire and execute justice on you with crowds of women looking on; I will put an end to your whoring: no more paid lovers for you.
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I will exhaust my fury against you. My jealousy will then leave you; I shall be appeased and my anger will stop.
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Since you have never remembered your youth, since in all this you have done nothing but provoke me, I in my turn intend to bring your conduct down on your own head – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks. Have you not been disgusting with all your filthy practices?
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Now all the proverb-makers will make up a proverb about you: Like mother, like daughter.
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Yes; you are a true daughter of your mother, who hated her husband and her children; a true sister of your sisters, who hated their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite.
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Your elder sister is Samaria, who lives on your left with her daughters. Your younger sister is Sodom, who lives on your right with her daughters.
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You have not failed to copy their behaviour; throughout your career you have shown yourself more corrupt than they were.
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As I live – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks – your sister Sodom and her daughters have not been as bad as you and your daughters.
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The crime of your sister Sodom was pride, gluttony, arrogance, complacency; such were the sins of Sodom and her daughters. They never helped the poor and needy;
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they were proud and engaged in filthy practices in front of me; that is why I have swept them away as you have seen.
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And yet Samaria never committed half the crimes that you have. You have done far filthier things than they did. By your filthy practices you have made your sisters seem almost innocent,
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and now you have to bear the shame for all those faults of which you have cleared your sisters; since the grossness of the sins for which you bear the guilt is more horrible than theirs, they now appear more virtuous than you are. Be ashamed, then; bear the shame of having put your sisters in the right.
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I will restore them. I will restore Sodom and her daughters. I will restore Samaria and her daughters; and, after that, I will restore you along with them,
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that you may bear your shame and be ashamed of all you have done, and console them.
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Your sister Sodom and her daughters will be restored to what they were. Samaria and her daughters will be restored to what they were. You and your daughters will be restored to what you were.
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Did you not gloat over your sister Sodom when you were still in your finery,
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before you were stripped naked? Now the daughters of Edom and all the women around are jeering at you, and the daughters of the Philistines are treating you like something beneath them, and so are all your neighbours.
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You have brought it on yourself by your brazenness and filth – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.
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For the Lord Yahweh says this: I will treat you as you deserve, you who have despised your oath even to the extent of breaking a covenant,
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but I will remember the covenant that I made with you when you were a girl, and I will conclude a covenant with you that shall last for ever.
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And you for your part will remember your past behaviour and be covered with shame when I take your elder and younger sisters and make them your daughters, although this was not included in this covenant.
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I am going to renew my covenant with you; and you will learn that I am Yahweh,
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and so remember and be covered with shame, and in your confusion be reduced to silence, when I have pardoned you for all that you have done – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.”‘
Chapters of Ezekiel
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
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