Ezekiel 22:1-13 ▼

1 The word of the LORD came to me:

2 |As for you, son of man, are you willing to pronounce judgment, are you willing to pronounce judgment on the bloody city? Then confront her with all her abominable deeds!

3 Then say, 'This is what the sovereign LORD says: O city, who spills blood within herself (which brings on her doom), and who makes herself idols (which results in impurity),

4 you are guilty because of the blood you shed and defiled by the idols you made. You have hastened the day of your doom; the end of your years has come. Therefore I will make you an object of scorn to the nations, an object to be mocked by all lands.

5 Those both near and far from you will mock you, you with your bad reputation, full of turmoil.

6 |'See how each of the princes of Israel living within you has used his authority to shed blood.

7 They have treated father and mother with contempt within you; they have oppressed the foreigner among you; they have wronged the orphan and the widow within you.

8 You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths!

9 Slanderous men shed blood within you. Those who live within you eat pagan sacrifices on the mountains; they commit obscene acts among you.

10 They have sex with their father's wife within you; they violate women during their menstrual period within you.

11 One commits an abominable act with his neighbor's wife; another obscenely defiles his daughter-in-law; another violates his sister--his father's daughter--within you.

12 They take bribes within you to shed blood. You engage in usury and charge interest; you extort money from your neighbors. You have forgotten me, declares the sovereign LORD.

13 |'See, I strike my hands together at the dishonest profit you have made, and at the bloodshed they have done among you.