The Babylonian Exile

All the people of the land will bury them, and it will bring them renown on the day I display My glory, declares the Lord GOD.

And men will be employed to continually pass through the land to cleanse it by burying the invaders who remain on the ground. At the end of the seven months they will begin their search.

As they pass through the land, anyone who sees a human bone will set up a pillar next to it, until the gravediggers have buried it in the Valley of Hamon-gog.

(Even the city will be named Hamonah.) And so they will cleanse the land.

And as for you, son of man, this is what the Lord GOD says: Call out to every kind of bird and to every beast of the field: ‘Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great feast on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood.

You will eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the princes of the earth as though they were rams, lambs, goats, and bulls—all the fattened animals of Bashan.

At the sacrifice I am preparing, you will eat fat until you are gorged and drink blood until you are drunk.

And at My table you will eat your fill of horses and riders, of mighty men and warriors of every kind,’ declares the Lord GOD.

I will display My glory among the nations, and all the nations will see the judgment that I execute and the hand that I lay upon them.

From that day forward the house of Israel will know that I am the LORD their God.

And the nations will know that the house of Israel went into exile for their iniquity, because they were unfaithful to Me. So I hid My face from them and delivered them into the hands of their enemies, so that they all fell by the sword.

I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and transgressions, and I hid My face from them.

Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: Now I will restore Jacob from captivity and will have compassion on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for My holy name.

They will forget their disgrace and all the treachery they committed against Me, when they dwell securely in their land, with no one to frighten them.

When I bring them back from the peoples and gather them out of the lands of their enemies, I will show My holiness in them in the sight of many nations.

Then they will know that I am the LORD their God, when I regather them to their own land, not leaving any of them behind after their exile among the nations.

And I will no longer hide My face from them, for I will pour out My Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Lord GOD.”

In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month—in the fourteenth year after Jerusalem had been struck down—on that very day the hand of the LORD was upon me, and He took me there.

In visions of God He took me to the land of Israel and set me on a very high mountain, on whose southern slope was a structure that resembled a city.

So He took me there, and I saw a man whose appearance was like bronze. He was standing in the gateway with a linen cord and a measuring rod in his hand.

“Son of man,” he said to me, “look with your eyes, hear with your ears, and pay attention to everything I am going to show you, for that is why you have been brought here. Report to the house of Israel everything you see.”

And I saw a wall surrounding the temple area. Now the length of the measuring rod in the man’s hand was six long cubits (each measuring a cubit and a handbreadth), and he measured the wall to be one rod thick and one rod high.

Then he came to the gate facing east and climbed its steps. He measured the threshold of the gate to be one rod deep.

Each gate chamber was one rod long and one rod wide, and there were five cubits between the gate chambers. The inner threshold of the gate by the portico facing inward was one rod deep.

Then he measured the portico of the gateway inside;