Ezekiel 22

¹ The word of Yahweh was addressed to me as follows,

² ‘Son of man, are you prepared to judge? Are you prepared to judge the murderous city? Confront her with all her filthy crimes!

³ Say, “The Lord Yahweh says this: City shedding blood inside yourself to bring your hour closer, setting up idols on your soil to defile yourself,

⁴ you have incurred guilt by the blood you have shed, you have defiled yourself with the idols you have made, you have brought your hour closer, you have come to the end of your time. And so I have made you an object of scorn to the nations and a laughing-stock to every country.

⁵ Near and far, they will scoff at you, the turbulent city with a tarnished name

⁶ where all the princes of Israel live, each one busy shedding blood, and a law to himself;

⁷ where people despise their fathers and mothers; where they ill-treat the settler; where they oppress the widow and the orphan;

⁸ where you have no reverence for my sanctuaries and profane my sabbaths;

⁹ where informers incite to bloodshed; where there are people who eat on the mountains and couple promiscuously;

¹⁰ where men uncover their father’s nakedness; where they force women in their unclean condition;

¹¹ where one man engages in filthy practices with his neighbour’s wife, another defiles himself with his daughter-in-law, another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter;

¹² where people take bribes for shedding blood; you charge usury and interest, you rob your neighbour by extortion, you forget all about me – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.

¹³ Now I will clap my hands at your acts of banditry and the blood that flows in you.

¹⁴ Will your heart be able to resist, will your hands be strong on the day I call you to account? I, Yahweh, have spoken, and I will do it.

¹⁵ I mean to disperse you throughout the nations, to scatter you in foreign countries, and to take your foulness from you.

¹⁶ I shall be dishonoured by you in the opinion of the nations; and so you will learn that I am Yahweh.”‘

¹⁷ The word of Yahweh was addressed to me as follows,

¹⁸ ‘Son of man, the House of Israel, as I see it, is base metal; they are all copper, tin, iron, lead, in the melting-pot; they are base metal.

¹⁹ And so, the Lord Yahweh says this: Since you are all base metal, I will collect you inside Jerusalem.

²⁰ As silver, copper, iron, lead and tin are thrown into the melting-pot together, and the fire is stoked underneath to melt it all down, so I will collect you in my furious anger and melt you down;

²¹ I will collect you and stoke the fire of my fury for you, and melt you down inside the city.

²² As silver is melted in the melting-pot, so you will be melted down inside the city; and thus you will learn that I, Yahweh, am the one who has discharged my anger on you.’

²³ The word of Yahweh was addressed to me as follows,

²⁴ ‘Son of man, say to her, “You are a land that has not received rain or shower on the day of anger,

²⁵ and whose princes are like a roaring lion tearing its prey inside her. They have eaten the people, seized wealth and jewels and widowed many inside her.

²⁶ Her priests have violated my Law and desecrated my sanctuaries; they have drawn no distinction between sacred and profane, they have not taught people the difference between clean and unclean; they have turned their eyes away from my sabbaths and I have been dishonoured by them.

²⁷ Her leaders in the city are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood and killing people to steal their possessions.

²⁸ Her prophets have whitewashed these crimes with their empty visions and lying prophecies. They have said: Yahweh says this; although Yahweh has not spoken.

²⁹ The people of the country have taken to extortion and banditry; they have oppressed the poor and needy and ill-treated the settler for no reason.

³⁰ I have been looking for someone among them to build a wall and man the breach in front of me, to defend the country and prevent me from destroying it; but I have not found anyone.

³¹ Hence I have discharged my anger on them; I have destroyed them in the fire of my fury. I have made their conduct recoil on their own heads – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.”‘