Study Desk

Those of you who escape shall remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I was crushed by their wanton heart that turned away from me, and their wanton eyes that turned after their idols. Then they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed, for all their abominations.

Thus says the Lord God : Clap your hands and stamp your foot, and say, Alas for all the vile abominations of the house of Israel! For they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.

Now the end is upon you, I will let loose my anger upon you; I will judge you according to your ways, I will punish you for all your abominations.

My eye will not spare you, I will have no pity. I will punish you for your ways, while your abominations are among you. Then you shall know that I am the Lord .

Soon now I will pour out my wrath upon you; I will spend my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways, and punish you for all your abominations.

The time has come, the day draws near; let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is upon all their multitude.

For the sellers shall not return to what has been sold as long as they remain alive. For the vision concerns all their multitude; it shall not be revoked. Because of their iniquity, they cannot maintain their lives.

They have blown the horn and made everything ready; but no one goes to battle, for my wrath is upon all their multitude.

They shall fling their silver into the streets, their gold shall be treated as unclean. Their silver and gold cannot save them on the day of the wrath of the Lord . They shall not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity.

Make a chain! For the land is full of bloody crimes; the city is full of violence.

Then he said to me, "Mortal, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of images? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land.'"

Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord ; women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.

And six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand; among them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing case at his side. They went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

He said to me, "The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city full of perversity; for they say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see.'

As for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity, but I will bring down their deeds upon their heads."

And as for their appearance, the four looked alike, something like a wheel within a wheel.

As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing "the wheelwork."

When they stopped, the others stopped, and when they rose up, the others rose up with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in them.

As for what their faces were like, they were the same faces whose appearance I had seen by the river Chebar. Each one moved straight ahead.

Mortal, your kinsfolk, your own kin, your fellow exiles, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, "They have gone far from the Lord ; to us this land is given for a possession."