Through My Bible Yr 02 – May 21

Ezekiel 6 – 7

Through My Bible – May 21

Ezekiel 6 – 7 (EHV)

See series: Through My Bible

Judgment on the Mountains for Idolatry

Ezekiel 6

1 The word of the Lord came to me.

2 Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them. 3 You shall say, “Mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God.” This is what the Lord God says to the mountains and to the hills, to the streambeds and to the valleys. Without fail, I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places. 4 Your altars will be demolished, and your incense altars [1] will be smashed, and I will throw down your fallen bodies in front of your filthy idols. [2] 5 I will lay out the corpses of the people of Israel in front of their filthy idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. 6 In all the places where you live, the towns will be laid waste, and the high places will be demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and demolished, your filthy idols will be crushed and cease to exist, your incense altars will be broken in pieces, and the things you have made will be wiped out. 7 The slain will fall in your midst, and then you will know that I am the Lord.

8 Nevertheless, when you are scattered in various countries, I will preserve for you some survivors who escape the sword among the nations. 9 Then, those of you who escape will remember me in the nations where they have been carried as captives. They will remember how I was heartbroken by their lustful hearts, which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which lusted for their filthy idols. They will loathe themselves because of all the evils they have done, for all their abominations. 10 Then they will know that I, the Lord, did not speak about bringing this disaster on them without it having a result. [3]

11 This is what the Lord God says. Clap your hands, [4] stomp your feet, and say, “We are doomed,” on account of all the vile abominations of the house of Israel, for by the sword, famine, and plague they will fall. 12 Anyone who is far away will die of the plague, and anyone who is near will fall by the sword, and anyone who remains under siege will die of famine. In this way I will exhaust my wrath upon them. 13 Then you will know that I am the Lord, when their fallen bodies lie among their filthy idols around their altars, on every high hill and on all the mountaintops, under every green tree and under every leafy oak, in every place where they offered fragrant sacrifice to appease all their filthy idols. 14 I will stretch out my hand against them, and I will make the land a desolate waste from the desert to Riblah, [5] in all the places they live. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

The End Has Come

Ezekiel 7

1 The word of the Lord came to me.

2 And to you, son of man, this is what the Lord God says about the soil of Israel. An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. 3 Now that the end is upon you, I will unleash my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways, and I will place on you the penalty for all your abominations. [6] 4 My eye will not have pity on you, and I will have no compassion, for I will place on you the penalty for your ways, and the punishment for your abominations will be in your midst. Then you will know that I am the Lord!

5 This is what the Lord God says. Disaster! An unparalleled disaster! [7] Watch, it is coming! 6 An end has come! The end has come! It has begun against you. Look, it is coming! 7 Doom [8] has come upon you, you inhabitants of the land. The time has come, the day is near. A day of panic, not joy, is on the mountains. 8 Now very soon I will pour out my wrath upon you, and I will exhaust my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways, and I will place on you the penalty for all your abominations. 9 My eye will not show pity, and I will have no compassion. According to your ways I will place the penalty on you, and the punishment for your abominations will be in your midst. Then you will know that I, the Lord, am the one who strikes you!

10 Look, the day is coming. It is here. Doom has broken out. The rod has budded. Insolence has blossomed. 11 Violence has grown into a rod against wickedness. None of them will remain—none of their noisy crowd, [9] none of their wealth, not a thing of value among them. 12 The time has come; the day has arrived.

The buyer should not rejoice. The seller should not grieve, because wrath is coming upon the whole noisy crowd. 13 So sellers will not return to what they have sold, even if they survive. Yes, the vision concerning the whole noisy crowd will not be reversed, and each man, because of the guilt in his life, will have no strength. 14 They will blow a blast on the ram’s horn and make everything ready, but no one will go to battle, because my wrath is upon the whole noisy crowd. 15 The sword is outside, and plague and famine are inside. Anyone in the countryside will die by the sword, and anyone in the city—plague and famine will devour him. 16 Any who escape will flee to the mountains, mourning like doves from the valley, each of them in his guilt. 17 All hands will hang limp, and water will run down every knee. [10] 18 They will put on sackcloth, and horror will cover them. Every face will be ashamed, and all their heads will be shaved bald.

19 They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be polluted by blood. [11] Their silver and their gold will not be able to rescue them on the day of the Lord’s fury. The silver and gold will not satisfy their appetites [12] or fill their stomachs, because it was the cause of their guilt and their downfall. 20 From the silver and gold of the Lord’s beautiful ornaments, which were their pride, they made their abominations and their disgusting images.

Therefore, for them I will make it a place polluted by blood. 21 I will hand it over to foreigners as loot. I will give it to the most wicked people on earth as plunder, and they will desecrate it. 22 I will turn my face away from my people so that the enemy may desecrate my treasured place, and so that robbers may enter it and desecrate it. 23 Prepare the chain, because the earth is full of judicial murder, [13] and the city is full of violence. 24 I will bring the most wicked of the nations, and they will take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the pride of the mighty, and their so-called sanctuaries [14] will be desecrated.

25 Terror is coming. They will seek peace, but there will be none. 26 Disaster after disaster will come, and one report will follow another. They will seek a vision from the prophet, but sound instruction will vanish from the priest and the ability to give advice from the elders. 27 The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with horror, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. On the basis of their own conduct I will deal with them, and by the standard they used to judge others I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

Footnotes

  1. Ezekiel 6:4 Or shrines or images of the sun god
  2. Ezekiel 6:4 Gillulim, one of Ezekiel’s favorite names for Israel’s idols, is a harsh word. Gillulim means idols made from round things. The round things are dung balls, hence the term could be rendered dung-ball deities or horse-apple gods, or one of the more graphic words for excrement.
  3. Ezekiel 6:10 Or for no reason
  4. Ezekiel 6:11 Several kinds of clapping, with different meanings, are referred to in Ezekiel. Here the meaning seems to be fear or despair.
  5. Ezekiel 6:14 A few Hebrew manuscripts read Riblah. Most Hebrew manuscripts read Diblah, but all other passages support Riblah as the name of the city in question. In Hebrew script r and d look alike.
  6. Ezekiel 7:3 Literally I will place on you all your abominations. In Hebrew it is common to omit mention of the penalty when stating that the Lord will make a person’s guilt cling to him. This idiom occurs throughout this chapter.
  7. Ezekiel 7:5 Variant disaster after disaster
  8. Ezekiel 7:7 Or a flood. The meaning of this word is uncertain, here and also in verse 10.
  9. Ezekiel 7:11 Or their whole horde
  10. Ezekiel 7:17 Terror will cause them to wet themselves.
  11. Ezekiel 7:19 The Hebrew word refers to menstrual uncleanness. Blood made a person ceremonially unclean.
  12. Ezekiel 7:19 Or souls
  13. Ezekiel 7:23 Like the case in which Jezebel framed Naboth and had him executed
  14. Ezekiel 7:24 The Hebrew uses a derogatory form of the word sanctuaries, with the connotation their so-called sanctuaries.

The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.