Ezekiel 7

7 ¹The word of our Father came to me, saying:

²And you, son of man—this is what the Sovereign Father says to the land of Israel: An end! The end comes on the land's four corners. ³Now the end is upon you, and I will send my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and bring all your detestable practices upon you. ⁴My eye will not spare you, nor will I have pity; I will repay you for your ways, and your detestable practices will be in your midst. Then you will know that I am your Father. ⁵This is what the Sovereign Father says: Disaster! A disaster like no other—look, it is coming! ⁶An end has come! The end has come! It has roused itself against you—look, it is coming! ⁷Doom has come upon you, you who live in the land. The time has come; the day is near—a day of panic, not of joyful shouting on the mountains. ^a a v7 Mountains were traditional sites of communal festival and celebration in ancient Israel; the contrast is that this day brings only terror, not joy. ⁸Soon now I will pour out my wrath upon you and unleash my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and bring all your detestable practices upon you. ⁹My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; I will repay you according to your ways, and your detestable practices will be in your midst. Then you will know that I am your Father, the one who strikes. ¹⁰Look, the day! Look, it is coming! Doom has gone out; the rod has blossomed, arrogance has budded. ¹¹Violence has risen into a rod of wickedness. None of them will remain—none of their crowd, none of their wealth—and nothing of value among them. ¹²The time has come; the day has arrived. Let the buyer not rejoice and the seller not mourn, for wrath is upon all their crowd. ¹³The seller will not return to what he sold, even while both are still alive. For the vision against all their crowd will not be revoked, and because of his sin no one can hold on to his life.

¹⁴They have blown the trumpet and made everything ready, but no one goes to battle, for my wrath is upon all their crowd. ¹⁵The sword is outside; plague and famine are inside. Whoever is in the field will die by the sword, and whoever is in the city—famine and plague will devour him. ¹⁶Those of them who escape will flee to the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, each one over his own sin. ¹⁷Every hand will go limp, and every knee will turn to water. ¹⁸They will put on mourning clothes, and horror will cover them; shame will be on every face, and every head will be shaved bare. ¹⁹They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be treated as something unclean. Their silver and their gold cannot rescue them in the day of my wrath. It cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs, for it was the stumbling block that led them into sin. ²⁰They took pride in the beauty of their ornaments and used them to make their detestable images and vile idols. Therefore I have made these things an unclean thing to them. ²¹I will hand these things over as plunder to foreigners and as spoil to the wicked of the earth, and they will defile it. ²²I will turn my face away from them, and they will defile my treasured place; robbers will enter it and defile it. ²³Forge the chain! For the land is full of bloody crimes and the city is full of violence. ²⁴I will bring the worst of the nations to take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the pride of the strong, and their holy places will be defiled. ²⁵When anguish comes, they will look for peace, but there will be none. ²⁶Disaster upon disaster will come, and rumor upon rumor. They will seek a vision from the prophet, but instruction will perish from the priest and counsel from the elders. ²⁷The king will mourn, the prince will be wrapped in despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their own conduct, and by their own standards I will judge them. Then they will know that I am their Father.