Ezekiel 5:8-17
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
8 therefore, thus says the Lord God: See, I am coming against you![a] I will carry out judgments among you while the nations look on.(A) 9 Because of all your abominations I will do to you what I have never done before, the like of which I will never do again. 10 Therefore, parents will eat their children in your midst, and children will eat their parents.[b] I will inflict punishments upon you and scatter all who remain to the winds.(B)
11 Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your atrocities and all your abominations, I will surely withdraw and not look upon you with pity nor spare you.(C) 12 A third of your people shall die of disease or starve to death within you; another third shall fall by the sword all around you; a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue them with the sword.(D)
13 Thus my anger will spend itself; I will vent my wrath against them until I am satisfied. Then they will know that I the Lord spoke in my passion when I spend my wrath upon them.(E) 14 I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of every passerby.(F) 15 And you will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in angry wrath, with furious chastisements. I, the Lord, have spoken! 16 When I loose against you the deadly arrows of starvation that I am sending to destroy you, I will increase starvation and will break your staff of bread.(G) 17 I will send against you starvation and wild beasts who will leave you childless, while disease and bloodshed sweep through you. I will bring the sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken.(H)
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 5:8 I am coming against you: an expression borrowed from the language of warfare in which an enemy attacked another with the sword. “You” in vv. 8–17 is Jerusalem.
- 5:10 Parents will eat their children…parents: the prophet describes the consequences of the prolonged Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587/586 B.C. See note on Lam 2:20.
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