Ezekiel 8:1-12 ▼

1 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.

2 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.

3 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.

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

5 “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.

6 “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.”

7 Then He brought me to the entrance to the court, and I looked and saw a hole in the wall.

8 “Son of man,” He told me, “dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall and discovered a doorway.

9 Then He said to me, “Go in and see the wicked abominations they are committing here.”

10 So I went in and looked, and engraved all around the wall was every kind of crawling creature and detestable beast, along with all the idols of the house of Israel.

11 Before them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising.

12 “Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are saying, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.’”