Day 187 of 365

¹Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

²"You, son of man, thus says the Lord God to the land of Israel, 'An end: the end has come on the four corners of the land.

³Now is the end on you, and I will send my anger on you, and will judge you according to your ways; and I will bring on you all your abominations.

⁴My eye shall not spare you, neither will I have pity; but I will bring your ways on you, and your abominations shall be in the midst of you: and you shall know that I am the Lord.'"

⁵"Thus says the Lord God: 'A disaster, a unique disaster; behold, it comes.

⁶An end has come, the end has come; it awakes against you; behold, it comes.

⁷Your doom has come to you, inhabitant of the land: the time has come, the day is near, a day of tumult, and not of joyful shouting, on the mountains.

⁸Now will I shortly pour out my wrath on you, and accomplish my anger against you, and will judge you according to your ways; and I will bring on you all your abominations.

⁹My eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: I will bring on you according to your ways; and your abominations shall be in the midst of you; and you shall know that I, the Lord, do strike.

¹⁰Behold, the day, behold, it comes: your doom is gone forth; the rod has blossomed, pride has budded.'

¹¹"Violence has risen up into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, nor of their multitude, nor of their wealth. There shall be nothing of value among them.

¹²The time has come, the day draws near: do not let the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for wrath is on all its multitude.

¹³For the seller shall not return to that which is sold, although they be yet alive: for the vision is touching the whole multitude of it, none shall return; neither shall any strengthen himself in the iniquity of his life.

¹⁴They have blown the trumpet, and have made all ready; but none goes to the battle; for my wrath is on all its multitude.

¹⁵The sword is outside, and the pestilence and the famine within: he who is in the field shall die with the sword: and he who is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.

¹⁶But those of those who escape shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, every one in his iniquity.

¹⁷All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water.

¹⁸They shall also clothe themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be on all faces, and baldness on all their heads.

¹⁹They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be as an unclean thing; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels; because it has been the stumbling block of their iniquity.

²⁰As for the beauty of his ornament, he set it in majesty; but they made the images of their abominations and their detestable things therein: therefore have I made it to them as an unclean thing.

²¹I will give it into the hands of the strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall profane it.

²²My face will I turn also from them, and they shall profane my secret place; and robbers shall enter into it, and profane it.

²³"Make the chain; for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.

²⁴Therefore I will bring the worst of the nations, and they shall possess their houses: I will also make the pride of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be profaned.

²⁵Destruction comes; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none.

²⁶Disaster shall come upon disaster, and rumor shall follow rumor; and they shall seek a vision from a prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the elders.

²⁷The king shall mourn, and the prince shall be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land shall be troubled: I will do to them after their way, and according to their own judgments will I judge them; and they shall know that I am the Lord."

¹It happened in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord God fell there on me.

²Then I saw, and behold, a likeness as the appearance of fire; from the appearance of his waist and downward, fire; and from his waist and upward, as the appearance of brightness, as it were glowing metal.

³He put forth the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and the sky, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the gate of the inner court that looks toward the north; where there was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy.

⁴Behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the appearance that I saw in the plain.

⁵Then he said to me, "Son of man, lift up your eyes now the way toward the north." So I lifted up my eyes the way toward the north, and see, northward of the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry.

⁶He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they do? Even the great abominations that the house of Israel do commit here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? But you shall again see yet other great abominations."

⁷He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall.

⁸Then he said to me, "Son of man, dig now in the wall": and when I had dug in the wall, behold, a door.

⁹He said to me, "Go in, and see the wicked abominations that they do here."

¹⁰So I went in and saw; and see, every form of creeping things, and abominable animals, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed around on the wall.

¹¹There stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel; and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, every man with his censer in his hand; and the odor of the cloud of incense went up.

¹²Then he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, 'The Lord doesn't see us. The Lord has forsaken the land.'"

¹³He said also to me, "You shall again see yet other great abominations which they do."

¹⁴Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and see, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz.

¹⁵Then he said to me, "Have you seen this, son of man? You shall again see yet greater abominations than these."

¹⁶He brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house; and see, at the door of the Lord's temple, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs toward the Lord's temple, and their faces toward the east; and they were worshipping the sun toward the east.

¹⁷Then he said to me, "Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger: and behold, they put the branch to their nose.

¹⁸Therefore will I also deal in wrath; my eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them."

¹Then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, "Cause those who are in charge of the city to draw near, every man with his destroying weapon in his hand."

²Behold, six men came from the way of the upper gate, which lies toward the north, every man with his slaughter weapon in his hand; and one man in their midst clothed in linen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side. They went in, and stood beside the bronze altar.

³The glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon it was, to the threshold of the house: and he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writer's inkhorn by his side.

⁴The Lord said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry over all the abominations that are done in its midst."

⁵To the others he said in my hearing, "Go through the city after him, and strike: do not let your eye spare, neither have pity;

⁶kill utterly the old man, the young man and the virgin, and little children and women; but do not come near any man on whom is the mark: and begin at my sanctuary." Then they began at the old men that were before the house.

⁷He said to them, "Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go forth!" They went forth, and struck in the city.

⁸It happened, while they were smiting, and I was left, that I fell on my face, and cried, and said, "Ah Lord God! Will you destroy all the residue of Israel in your pouring out of your wrath on Jerusalem?"

⁹Then he said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perversion: for they say, 'The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord doesn't see.'

¹⁰As for me also, my eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will bring their way on their head."

¹¹Behold, the man clothed in linen, who had the inkhorn by his side, reported the matter, saying, "I have done as you have commanded me."

¹Then I looked, and saw, in the expanse that was over the head of the cherubim there appeared above them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.

²He spoke to the man clothed in linen, and said, "Go in between the whirling wheels, even under the cherub, and fill both your hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city." He went in as I watched.

³Now the cherubim stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court.

⁴The glory of the Lord mounted up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord's glory.

⁵The sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of God Almighty when he speaks.

⁶It came to pass, when he commanded the man clothed in linen, saying, "Take fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim," that he went in, and stood beside a wheel.

⁷The cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim to the fire that was between the cherubim, and took of it, and put it into the hands of him who was clothed in linen, who took it and went out.

⁸There appeared in the cherubim the form of a man's hand under their wings.

⁹I looked, and behold, four wheels beside the cherubim, one wheel beside one cherub, and another wheel beside another cherub; and the appearance of the wheels was like a beryl stone.

¹⁰As for their appearance, the four of them had one likeness, like a wheel within a wheel.

¹¹When they went, they went in their four directions: they didn't turn as they went, but to the place where the head looked they followed it; they didn't turn as they went.

¹²Their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes all around, even the wheels that the four of them had.

¹³As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing, "the whirling wheels."

¹⁴Every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third face the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.

¹⁵The cherubim mounted up: this is the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar.

¹⁶When the cherubim went, the wheels went beside them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the wheels also didn't turn from beside them.

¹⁷When they stood, these stood; and when they mounted up, these mounted up with them: for the spirit of the living creature was in them.

¹⁸The glory of the Lord went forth from over the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim.

¹⁹The cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight when they went forth, and the wheels beside them: and they stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord's house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.

²⁰These were the living creatures that I saw under the God of Israel by the river Chebar; and I knew that they were cherubim.

²¹Every one had four faces, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings.

²²As for the likeness of their faces, they were the faces which I saw by the river Chebar, their appearances and themselves; they went every one straight forward.