The Lord said, “This is how the Israelites will eat their bread—ceremonially unclean—among the nations where I will banish them.”

Then your survivors will remember Me among the nations where they are taken captive, how I was crushed by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me and by their eyes that lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves because of the evil things they did, their detestable practices of every kind.

“For this is what the Lord God says: How much worse will it be when I send My four devastating judgments against Jerusalem—sword, famine, dangerous animals, and plague—in order to wipe out both man and animal from it!

“Son of man, how does the wood of the vine, that branch among the trees of the forest, compare to any other wood?

Even when it was whole it could not be made into a useful object. How much less can it ever be made into anything useful when the fire has devoured it and it is charred!

“How your heart was inflamed with lust”—the declaration of the Lord God—“when you did all these things, the acts of a brazen prostitute,

“In addition, they sent for men who came from far away when a messenger was dispatched to them. And look how they came! You bathed, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with jewelry for them.

Yet they had sex with her as one does with a prostitute. This is how they had sex with Oholah and Oholibah, those obscene women.

Then they will lament for you and say of you:

How you have perished, city of renown,
you who were populated from the seas!
She who was powerful on the sea,
she and all of her inhabitants
inflicted their terror.

“Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel: You have said this, ‘Our transgressions and our sins are heavy on us, and we are wasting away because of them! How then can we survive?’

Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Look how they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are cut off.’