“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“That I will cause a trumpet blast of war to be heard
Against Rabbah of the sons of Ammon;
And it will become a desolate heap,
And her towns will be set on fire.
Then Israel will take possession of his possessors,”
Says the Lord.

“I will set fire to the wall of Damascus,
And it will devour the fortified towers of Ben-hadad.”

“They will take away their tents and their flocks;
They will carry off for themselves
Their tent curtains, all their goods and their camels,
And they will call out to one another, ‘Terror on every side!’

“Their camels will become plunder,
And their many cattle for booty,
And I will scatter to all the winds those who cut the corners of their hair;
And I will bring their disaster from every side,” declares the Lord.

‘Then I will set My throne in Elam
And destroy out of it king and princes,’
Declares the Lord.

“All who came upon them have devoured them;
And their adversaries have said, ‘We are not guilty,
Inasmuch as they have sinned against the Lord who is the habitation of righteousness,
Even the Lord, the hope of their fathers.’

“Draw up your battle lines against Babylon on every side,
All you who bend the bow;
Shoot at her, do not be sparing with your arrows,
For she has sinned against the Lord.

“Raise your battle cry against her on every side!
She has given herself up, her pillars have fallen,
Her walls have been torn down.
For this is the vengeance of the Lord:
Take vengeance on her;
As she has done to others, so do to her.

“I set a snare for you and you were also caught, O Babylon,
While you yourself were not aware;
You have been found and also seized
Because you have engaged in conflict with the Lord.”

“Summon many against Babylon,
All those who bend the bow:
Encamp against her on every side,
Let there be no escape.
Repay her according to her work;
According to all that she has done, so do to her;
For she has become arrogant against the Lord,
Against the Holy One of Israel.

“The arrogant one will stumble and fall
With no one to raise him up;
And I will set fire to his cities
And it will devour all his environs.”

“I will dispatch foreigners to Babylon that they may winnow her
And may devastate her land;
For on every side they will be opposed to her
In the day of her calamity.

The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting,
They stay in the strongholds;
Their strength is exhausted,
They are becoming like women;
Their dwelling places are set on fire,
The bars of her gates are broken.

“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me and crushed me,
He has set me down like an empty vessel;
He has swallowed me like a monster,
He has filled his stomach with my delicacies;
He has washed me away.

You who have escaped the sword,
Depart! Do not stay!
Remember the Lord from afar,
And let Jerusalem come to your mind.

Thus says the Lord of hosts,
“The broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed
And her high gates will be set on fire;
So the peoples will toil for nothing,
And the nations become exhausted only for fire.”

Then Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “As soon as you come to Babylon, then see that you read all these words aloud,

He did evil in the sight of the Lord like all that Jehoiakim had done.

Then he spoke kindly to him and set his throne above the thrones of the kings who were with him in Babylon.

He has bent His bow like an enemy;
He has set His right hand like an adversary
And slain all that were pleasant to the eye;
In the tent of the daughter of Zion
He has poured out His wrath like fire.

The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit on the ground, they are silent.
They have thrown dust on their heads;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Have bowed their heads to the ground.

All who pass along the way
Clap their hands in derision at you;
They hiss and shake their heads
At the daughter of Jerusalem,
“Is this the city of which they said,
‘The perfection of beauty,
A joy to all the earth’?”

You called as in the day of an appointed feast
My terrors on every side;
And there was no one who escaped or survived
In the day of the Lord’s anger.
Those whom I bore and reared,
My enemy annihilated them.

He bent His bow
And set me as a target for the arrow.

Let him sit alone and be silent
Since He has laid it on him.

Waters flowed over my head;
I said, “I am cut off!”

You drew near when I called on You;
You said, “Do not fear!”

Their appearance is blacker than soot,
They are not recognized in the streets;
Their skin is shriveled on their bones,
It is withered, it has become like wood.

“Depart! Unclean!” they cried of themselves.
“Depart, depart, do not touch!”
So they fled and wandered;
Men among the nations said,
“They shall not continue to dwell with us.”

The breath of our nostrils, the Lord’s anointed,
Was captured in their pits,
Of whom we had said, “Under his shadow
We shall live among the nations.”

Under the expanse their wings were stretched out straight, one toward the other; each one also had two wings covering its body on the one side and on the other.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!”

As He spoke to me the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet; and I heard Him speaking to me.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the sons of Israel, to a rebellious people who have rebelled against Me; they and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day.

And you, son of man, neither fear them nor fear their words, though thistles and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions; neither fear their words nor be dismayed at their presence, for they are a rebellious house.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.”

He said to me, “Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you.” Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them.

Moreover, He said to me, “Son of man, take into your heart all My words which I will speak to you and listen closely.

Then I came to the exiles who lived beside the river Chebar at Tel-abib, and I sat there seven days where they were living, causing consternation among them.

The hand of the Lord was on me there, and He said to me, “Get up, go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you.”

The Spirit then entered me and made me stand on my feet, and He spoke with me and said to me, “Go, shut yourself up in your house.

Then get yourself an iron plate and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city, and set your face toward it so that it is under siege, and besiege it. This is a sign to the house of Israel.

“As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; you shall bear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it.

When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each year.

Then you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared and prophesy against it.

Now behold, I will put ropes on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.

“But as for you, take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt, put them in one vessel and make them into bread for yourself; you shall eat it according to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days.

You shall eat it as a barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human dung.”

Then the Lord said, “Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them.”

But I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I have never been defiled; for from my youth until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any unclean meat ever entered my mouth.”

Then He said to me, “See, I will give you cow’s dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread.”

Moreover, He said to me, “Son of man, behold, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they will eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and drink water by measure and in horror,

“Thus says the Lord God, ‘This is Jerusalem; I have set her at the center of the nations, with lands around her.

therefore, thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I, even I, am against you, and I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations.

Moreover, I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations which surround you, in the sight of all who pass by.

“Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them

Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols; and they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed, for all their abominations.

Then they will know that I am the Lord; I have not said in vain that I would inflict this disaster on them.”’

He stretched out the form of a hand and caught me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the idol of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy, was located.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, raise your eyes now toward the north.” So I raised my eyes toward the north, and behold, to the north of the altar gate was this idol of jealousy at the entrance.

And He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, so that I would be far from My sanctuary? But yet you will see still greater abominations.”

He said to me, “Son of man, now dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall, and behold, an entrance.

And He said to me, “Go in and see the wicked abominations that they are committing here.”

Then He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are committing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’”

And He said to me, “Yet you will see still greater abominations which they are committing.”

He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Yet you will see still greater abominations than these.”

He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they have committed here, that they have filled the land with violence and provoked Me repeatedly? For behold, they are putting the twig to their nose.

The Lord said to him, “Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst.”

But to the others He said in my hearing, “Go through the city after him and strike; do not let your eye have pity and do not spare.

And He said to them, “Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!” Thus they went out and struck down the people in the city.

Then He said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is very, very great, and the land is filled with blood and the city is full of perversion; for they say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see!’

And He spoke to the man clothed in linen and said, “Enter between the whirling wheels under the cherubim and fill your hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city.” And he entered in my sight.

Now the cherubim were standing on the right side of the temple when the man entered, and the cloud filled the inner court.

When the cherubim departed, they lifted their wings and rose up from the earth in my sight with the wheels beside them; and they stood still at the entrance of the east gate of the Lord’s house, and the glory of the God of Israel hovered over them.

He said to me, “Son of man, these are the men who devise iniquity and give evil advice in this city,

Then the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me, and He said to me, “Say, ‘Thus says the Lord, “So you think, house of Israel, for I know your thoughts.

Now it came about as I prophesied, that Pelatiah son of Benaiah died. Then I fell on my face and cried out with a loud voice and said, “Alas, Lord God! Will You bring the remnant of Israel to a complete end?”

“Son of man, your brothers, your relatives, your fellow exiles and the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those to whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘Go far from the Lord; this land has been given us as a possession.’

Therefore, son of man, prepare for yourself baggage for exile and go into exile by day in their sight; even go into exile from your place to another place in their sight. Perhaps they will understand though they are a rebellious house.

Bring your baggage out by day in their sight, as baggage for exile. Then you will go out at evening in their sight, as those going into exile.

Dig a hole through the wall in their sight and go out through it.

Load the baggage on your shoulder in their sight and carry it out in the dark. You shall cover your face so that you cannot see the land, for I have set you as a sign to the house of Israel.”

I did so, as I had been commanded. By day I brought out my baggage like the baggage of an exile. Then in the evening I dug through the wall with my hands; I went out in the dark and carried the baggage on my shoulder in their sight.

“Son of man, has not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said to you, ‘What are you doing?’

Did you not see a false vision and speak a lying divination when you said, ‘The Lord declares,’ but it is not I who have spoken?”’”

“Now you, son of man, set your face against the daughters of your people who are prophesying from their own inspiration. Prophesy against them

Then some elders of Israel came to me and sat down before me.

“Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity. Should I be consulted by them at all?

For anyone of the house of Israel or of the immigrants who stay in Israel who separates himself from Me, sets up his idols in his heart, puts right before his face the stumbling block of his iniquity, and then comes to the prophet to inquire of Me for himself, I the Lord will be brought to answer him in My own person.

I will set My face against that man and make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from among My people. So you will know that I am the Lord.

and I set My face against them. Though they have come out of the fire, yet the fire will consume them. Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I set My face against them.

“When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!’

They will burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women. Then I will stop you from playing the harlot, and you will also no longer pay your lovers.

He plucked off the topmost of its young twigs and brought it to a land of merchants; he set it in a city of traders.

He also took some of the seed of the land and planted it in fertile soil. He placed it beside abundant waters; he set it like a willow.

Thus says the Lord God, “I will also take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and set it out; I will pluck from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one and I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.

“What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying,
‘The fathers eat the sour grapes,
But the children’s teeth are set on edge’?

‘Then nations set against him
On every side from their provinces,
And they spread their net over him;
He was captured in their pit.

Now in the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month, certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the Lord, and sat before me.