Then a wind came into me and stood me on my feet. The Lord spoke to me and said, "Go shut yourself in your house.

I will shoot against them deadly, destructive arrows of famine, which I will shoot to destroy you. I will prolong a famine on you and will remove the bread supply.

He plucked off its topmost shoot; he brought it to a land of merchants and planted it in a city of traders.

He took one of the seedlings of the land, placed it in a cultivated plot; a shoot by abundant water, like a willow he planted it.

I will plant it on a high mountain of Israel, and it will raise branches and produce fruit and become a beautiful cedar. Every bird will live under it; Every winged creature will live in the shade of its branches.

A fire has gone out from its branch; it has consumed its shoot and its fruit. No strong branch was left in it, nor a scepter to rule.' This is a lament song, and has become a lament song."

Into his right hand comes the portent for Jerusalem -- to set up battering rams, to give the signal for slaughter, to shout out the battle cry, to set up battering rams against the gates, to erect a siege ramp, to build a siege wall.

you are guilty because of the blood you shed and defiled by the idols you made. You have hastened the day of your doom; the end of your years has come. Therefore I will make you an object of scorn to the nations, an object to be mocked by all lands.

"'See how each of the princes of Israel living within you has used his authority to shed blood.

Slanderous men shed blood within you. Those who live within you eat pagan sacrifices on the mountains; they commit obscene acts among you.

They take bribes within you to shed blood. You engage in usury and charge interest; you extort money from your neighbors. You have forgotten me, declares the sovereign Lord.

"Son of man, realize that I am about to take the delight of your eyes away from you with a jolt, but you must not mourn or weep or shed tears.

Consider Assyria, a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches, like a forest giving shade, and extremely tall; its top reached into the clouds.

All the birds of the sky nested in its boughs; under its branches all the beasts of the field gave birth, in its shade all the great nations lived.

Foreigners from the most terrifying nations have cut it down and left it to lie there on the mountains. In all the valleys its branches have fallen, and its boughs lie broken in the ravines of the land. All the peoples of the land have departed from its shade and left it.

Those who lived in its shade, its allies among the nations, also went down with it to Sheol, to those killed by the sword.

Therefore say to them, 'This is what the sovereign Lord says: You eat the meat with the blood still in it, pray to your idols, and shed blood. Do you really think you will possess the land?

So I poured my anger on them because of the blood they shed on the land and because of the idols with which they defiled it.

Then he brought me back by way of the outer gate of the sanctuary which faces east, but it was shut.

The Lord said to me: "This gate will be shut; it will not be opened, and no one will enter by it. For the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it will remain shut.