Ezekiel 6

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

² ‘Son of man, turn towards the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them.

³ Say, “Mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh. The Lord Yahweh says this to mountains and hills and ravines and valleys: Listen; I am going to summon the sword against you and destroy your high places.

⁴ Your altars will be wrecked, and your incense burners smashed; your inhabitants are going to be cut to pieces and thrown down in front of your idols,

⁵ and their bones spread all round your altars.

⁶ Throughout your territory the towns will be destroyed and the high places wrecked, to the ruin and wrecking of your altars, the shattering and abolition of your idols, the smashing of your incense burners and the utter destruction of all your works.

⁷ Among you men will fall, and be cut to pieces; and so you will learn that I am Yahweh.

⁸ But I shall spare some of you; they will escape the sword and be dispersed by me among the nations.

⁹ Your survivors will remember me among the nations where they have been deported. I shall have broken their wanton hearts for having deserted me, and blinded their adulterous eyes for having fawned on idols. They will loathe themselves for all the wrong they have caused by their filthy practices,

¹⁰ and so they will learn that I am Yahweh; I have said, and I have meant it, that I am going to inflict all these disasters on them.

¹¹ The Lord Yahweh says this: Clap your hands, stamp your feet, and say: Alas! for all the abominable sins of the House of Israel, which is about to perish by sword, famine and plague.

¹² Far off, they will die by plague; near at hand they will fall by the sword; those who are spared and besieged will die of hunger, since I mean to satisfy my fury against them.

¹³ You will know that I am Yahweh when their corpses, cut to pieces, lie there among their idols, all round their altars, on every high hill, on every mountain top, under every spreading tree, under every leafy oak, in fact wherever they offer an appeasing fragrance to all their idols.

¹⁴ I mean to stretch out my hand against them and reduce the country to an empty wasteland from the desert to Riblah,[*a] the length and breadth of the country; and so they will learn that I am Yahweh.”‘