The Babylonian Exile

I will not look on you with pity, nor will I spare you, but I will punish you for your ways and for the abominations among you. Then you will know that it is I, the LORD, who strikes the blow.

Behold, the day is here! It has come! Doom has gone out, the rod has budded, arrogance has bloomed.

Their violence has grown into a rod to punish their wickedness. None of them will remain: none of their multitude, none of their wealth, and nothing of value.

The time has come; the day has arrived. Let the buyer not rejoice and the seller not mourn, for wrath is upon the whole multitude.

The seller will surely not recover what he sold while both remain alive. For the vision concerning the whole multitude will not be revoked, and because of their iniquity, not one of them will preserve his life.

They have blown the trumpet and made everything ready, but no one goes to war, for My wrath is upon the whole multitude.

The sword is outside; plague and famine are within. Those in the country will die by the sword, and those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague.

The survivors will escape and live in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valley, each for his own iniquity.

Every hand will go limp, and every knee will turn to water.

They will put on sackcloth, and terror will overwhelm them. Shame will cover all their faces, and all their heads will be shaved.

They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will seem unclean. Their silver and gold cannot save them in the day of the wrath of the LORD. They cannot satisfy their appetites or fill their stomachs with wealth, for it became the stumbling block that brought their iniquity.

His beautiful ornaments they transformed into pride and used them to fashion their vile images and detestable idols. Therefore I will make these into something unclean for them.

And I will hand these things over as plunder to foreigners and loot to the wicked of the earth, who will defile them.

I will turn My face away from them, and they will defile My treasured place. Violent men will enter it, and they will defile it.

Forge the chain, for the land is full of crimes of bloodshed, and the city is full of violence.

So I will bring the most wicked of nations to take possession of their houses. I will end the pride of the mighty, and their holy places will be profaned.

Anguish is coming! They will seek peace, but find none.

Disaster upon disaster will come, and rumor after rumor. Then they will seek a vision from a prophet, but instruction from the priests will perish, as will counsel from the elders.

The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and I will judge them by their own standards. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’”

In the sixth year, on the fifth day of the sixth month, I was sitting in my house, and the elders of Judah were sitting before me; and there the hand of the Lord GOD fell upon me.

Then I looked and saw a figure like that of a man. From His waist down His appearance was like fire, and from His waist up He was as bright as the gleam of amber.

He stretched out what looked like a hand and took me by the hair of my head. Then the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and carried me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the idol that provokes jealousy was seated.

And there I saw the glory of the God of Israel, like the vision I had seen in the plain.

“Son of man,” He said to me, “now lift up your eyes to the north.” So I lifted up my eyes to the north, and in the entrance north of the Altar Gate I saw this idol of jealousy.

“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what they are doing—the great abominations that the house of Israel is committing—to drive Me far from My sanctuary? Yet you will see even greater abominations.”