Ezekiel 22

22 ¹The word of our Father came to me:

²And you, son of man, will you judge? Will you judge the city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her detestable things. ³Say: The Sovereign Father declares: City that sheds blood inside itself, so its time has come, and makes idols for itself, becoming unclean. ⁴By the blood you shed you are guilty, and by the idols you made you are unclean. You have brought your end near, reached the end of your years. So I make you a disgrace to the nations, a mockery to every land. ⁵Those near and far from you will mock you—city of unclean name, full of turmoil.

⁶See how every prince of Israel within you uses his power to shed blood. ⁷In you they scorned father and mother; in you they oppressed the foreigner; in you they wronged the orphan and the widow. ⁸You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths. ⁹In you are slanderers out to shed blood; in you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and do indecent acts among you. ¹⁰In you they sleep with their fathers' wives; in you they violate women during their menstrual impurity. ¹¹One commits detestable acts with his neighbor's wife; another indecently makes his daughter-in-law unclean; another violates his sister, his father's daughter. ¹²In you they take bribes to shed blood; you charge interest, make excessive profit, extort unjust gain from your neighbors. And me you have forgotten, declares the Sovereign Father.

¹³Now look, I strike my hands together at the dishonest gain you have made and at the blood you have shed in your midst. ¹⁴Will your courage hold, your hands stay strong, when I deal with you? I, your Father, have spoken and will act. ¹⁵I will scatter you among the nations, disperse you through the lands, and purge your impurity out of you. ¹⁶Once you are made unclean before the nations, you will know that I am your Father.

¹⁷Then the word of our Father came to me:

¹⁸Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to me; all of them copper, tin, iron, lead inside the furnace—dross of silver. ¹⁹So the Sovereign Father says: Because you have all become impurities, I will gather you into Jerusalem. ²⁰As silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin are gathered into a furnace, and fire is blown on them to melt them, so I will gather you in my anger and wrath, deposit you there, and melt you. ²¹I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of my anger, and you will melt inside it. ²²As silver melts in a furnace, so you will melt in it. Then you will know that I, your Father, poured out my wrath on you.

²³Again the word of our Father came to me:

²⁴Son of man, tell her: You are a land not made clean, not rained on in the day of anger. ²⁵Her prophets plot together, a roaring lion tearing prey; they devour lives, seize treasure and valuables, and leave many widows within her. ²⁶Her priests violated my law and desecrated my holy things; they made no distinction between holy and common, taught no difference between unclean and clean, and hid their eyes from my Sabbaths, so I am desecrated among them. ²⁷Her officials are wolves tearing prey, shedding blood, destroying lives for dishonest gain. ²⁸Her prophets whitewashed this for them with false visions and lying fortune-telling, saying, "This is what God says," when our Father has not spoken. ²⁹The people of the land practice extortion and robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and deny the foreigner justice.

³⁰I searched among them for someone to build up the wall and stand before me in the breach for the land, so I would not destroy it—but found no one. ³¹So I poured out my indignation on them, consuming them with the fire of my wrath. I brought their way down on their own heads, declares the Sovereign Father.