¹ The word of Yahweh came to me, saying,

² Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem, and drop [your word] toward the sanctuaries, and prophesy against the land of Israel;

³ and tell the land of Israel, Thus says Yahweh: Behold, I am against you, and will draw forth my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from you the righteous and the wicked.

⁴ Seeing then that I will cut off from you the righteous and the wicked, therefore shall my sword go forth out of its sheath against all flesh from the south to the north:

⁵ and all flesh shall know that I, Yahweh, have drawn forth my sword out of its sheath; it shall not return any more.

⁶ Sigh therefore, you son of man; with the breaking of your thighs and with bitterness you will sigh before their eyes.

⁷ It shall be, when they tell you, Why do you sigh? that you shall say, Because of the news, for it comes; and every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be feeble, and every spirit shall faint, and all knees shall be weak as water: behold, it comes, and it shall be done, says the Lord Yahweh.

⁸ The word of Yahweh came to me, saying,

⁹ Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus says Yahweh: say, A sword, a sword, it is sharpened, and also furbished;

¹⁰ it is sharpened that it may make a slaughter; it is furbished that it may be as lightning: shall we then make mirth? the rod of my son, it condemns every tree.

¹¹ It is given to be furbished, that it may be handled: the sword, it is sharpened, yes, it is furbished, to give it into the hand of the killer.

¹² Cry and wail, son of man; for it is on my people, it is on all the princes of Israel: they are delivered over to the sword with my people; strike therefore on your thigh.

¹³ For there is a trial; and what if even the rod that condemns shall be no more? says the Lord Yahweh.

¹⁴ You therefore, son of man, prophesy, and strike your hands together; and let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of the deadly wounded: it is the sword of the great one who is deadly wounded, which enters into their rooms.

¹⁵ I have set the threatening sword against all their gates, that their heart may melt, and their stumblings be multiplied: ah! it is made as lightning, it is pointed for slaughter.

¹⁶ Gather yourselves together, go to the right, set yourselves in array, go to the left, wherever your face is set.

¹⁷ I will also strike my hands together, and I will cause my wrath to rest: I, Yahweh, have spoken it.

¹⁸ The word of Yahweh came to me again, saying,

¹⁹ Also, you son of man, appoint two ways, that the sword of the king of Babylon may come; they both shall come forth out of one land: and mark out a place, mark it out at the head of the way to the city.

²⁰ You shall appoint a way for the sword to come to Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and to Judah in Jerusalem the fortified.

²¹ For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows back and forth, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver.

²² In his right hand was the divination [for] Jerusalem, to set battering rams, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to cast up mounds, to build forts.

²³ It shall be to them as a false divination in their sight, who have sworn oaths to them; but he brings iniquity to memory, that they may be taken.

²⁴ Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because you have made your iniquity to be remembered, in that your transgressions are uncovered, so that in all your doings your sins appear; because you have come to memory, you shall be taken with the hand.

²⁵ You, deadly wounded wicked one, the prince of Israel, whose day is come, in the time of the iniquity of the end,

²⁶ thus says the Lord Yahweh: Remove the turban, and take off the crown; this [shall be] no more the same; exalt that which is low, and abase that which is high.

²⁷ I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: this also shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it [him].

²⁸ You, son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus says the Lord Yahweh concerning the children of Ammon, and concerning their reproach; and say, A sword, a sword is drawn, for the slaughter it is furbished, to cause it to devour, that it may be as lightning;

²⁹ while they see for you false visions, while they divine lies to you, to lay you on the necks of the wicked who are deadly wounded, whose day is come in the time of the iniquity of the end.

³⁰ Cause it to return into its sheath. In the place where you were created, in the land of your birth, will I judge you.

³¹ I will pour out my indignation on you; I will blow on you with the fire of my wrath; and I will deliver you into the hand of brutish men, skillful to destroy.

³² You shall be for fuel to the fire; your blood shall be in the midst of the land; you shall be remembered no more: for I, Yahweh, have spoken it.

¹ It happened in the sixth year, in the sixth [month], in the fifth [day] of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord Yahweh fell there on me.

² Then I saw, and behold, a likeness as the appearance of fire; from the appearance of his waist and downward, fire; and from his waist and upward, as the appearance of brightness, as it were glowing metal.

³ He put forth the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and the sky, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the gate of the inner [court] that looks toward the north; where there was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy.

⁴ Behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the appearance that I saw in the plain.

⁵ Then he said to me, Son of man, lift up your eyes now the way toward the north. So I lifted up my eyes the way toward the north, and see, northward of the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry.

⁶ He said to me, Son of man, do you see what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel do commit here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? But you shall again see yet other great abominations.

⁷ He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall.

⁸ Then he said to me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had dug in the wall, behold, a door.

⁹ He said to me, Go in, and see the wicked abominations that they do here.

¹⁰ So I went in and saw; and see, every form of creeping things, and abominable animals, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed around on the wall.

¹¹ There stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel; and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, every man with his censer in his hand; and the odor of the cloud of incense went up.

¹² Then he said to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? for they say, Yahweh doesn't see us; Yahweh has forsaken the land.

¹³ He said also to me, You shall again see yet other great abominations which they do.

¹⁴ Then he brought me to the door of the gate of Yahweh's house which was toward the north; and see, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz.

¹⁵ Then he said to me, Have you seen [this], son of man? You shall again see yet greater abominations than these.

¹⁶ He brought me into the inner court of Yahweh's house; and see, at the door of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east; and they were worshipping the sun toward the east.

¹⁷ Then he said to me, Have you seen [this], son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger: and behold, they put the branch to their nose.

¹⁸ Therefore will I also deal in wrath; my eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.