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Impending Disaster

The word of the L ord came to me: ²You, O mortal, thus says the Lord G od to the land of Israel:

An end! The end has come

upon the four corners of the land.

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 L ord.

⁵ Thus says the Lord G od:

Disaster after disaster! See, it comes.

An end has come, the end has come.

It has awakened against you; see, it comes!

Your doom has come to you,

O inhabitant of the land.

The time has come, the day is near—

of tumult, not of reveling on the mountains.

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.

My eye will not spare; I will have no pity.

I will punish you according to your ways,

while your abominations are among you.

Then you shall know that it is I the L ord who strike.

See, the day! See, it comes!

Your doom has gone out.

The rod has blossomed, pride has budded.

Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness.

None of them shall remain,

not their abundance, not their wealth;

no pre-eminence among them.

The time has come, the day draws near;

let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn,

for wrath is upon all their multitude.

¹³ 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.

The sword is outside, pestilence and famine are inside;

those in the field die by the sword;

those in the city—famine and pestilence devour them.

If any survivors escape,

they shall be found on the mountains

like doves of the valleys,

all of them moaning over their iniquity.

All hands shall grow feeble,

all knees turn to water.

They shall put on sackcloth,

horror shall cover them.

Shame shall be on all faces,

baldness on all their heads.

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 L ord. They shall not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. ²⁰From their beautiful ornament, in which they took pride, they made their abominable images, their detestable things; therefore I will make of it an unclean thing to them.

I will hand it over to strangers as booty,

to the wicked of the earth as plunder;

they shall profane it.

I will avert my face from them,

so that they may profane my treasured place;

the violent shall enter it,

they shall profane it.

Make a chain!

For the land is full of bloody crimes;

the city is full of violence.

I will bring the worst of the nations

to take possession of their houses.

I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong,

and their holy places shall be profaned.

When anguish comes, they will seek peace,

but there shall be none.

Disaster comes upon disaster,

rumor follows rumor;

they shall keep seeking a vision from the prophet;

instruction shall perish from the priest,

and counsel from the elders.

The king shall mourn,

the prince shall be wrapped in despair,

and the hands of the people of the land shall tremble.

According to their way I will deal with them;

according to their own judgments I will judge them.

And they shall know that I am the L ord.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

In other words he confines his own sentence, that God will not spare them, nor will he be entreated. For when hypocrites hear the praises of God which are assigned to him in scripture, namely, that he is merciful and long-suffering, (Numbers 14:18; Psalm 103:8,) they seize upon them and fabricate for themselves the material of foolish and perverse confidence. God here pronounces that his pity would not be accessible to the wicked, who do not cease to repel it far from them. And this is worthy of notice, because nothing is more natural than to be intoxicated with false hope when we hear that God is merciful, unless we know for what purpose he testifies this concerning himself, namely, that sinners may betake themselves to him, and may fearlessly call upon him, and implore his mercy, of which they have such remarkable testimony. But hypocrites always become worse, meanwhile they wish God to be propitious to them. Hence when he says, his eye will not spare, neither would he pity them, his intention must be observed, that. wicked and ungodly men should not think his clemency prepared for them against which they have previously shut the door. Because I will put thy ways upon thee — that is, I will cast thy wickedness against thee. We see then that the people’s sins were placed before them, and as it were lay there as long as God spared them. Now, therefore, he first signifies that they should have no cause of quarrel or complaint, because he will cast against them the iniquities which they had heaped upon him. Then also he silently accuses them of too much security, because they never could be brought to repentance, while God sustained and tolerated their sins. And thy abominations, he says, shall be in the midst of thee They were so from the first as far as their guilt was concerned, but God had not yet poured forth his anger. He says, therefore, thy abominations shall be in the midst of thee, because it should really appear that they were not obstinate against God without punishment. Again he repeats, ye shall know that I am Jehovah It is quite clear, that by their obstinacy they compelled God to speak thus, since they despised Ezekiel. But although they pretended to some piety, it cannot be doubted that they would despise God himself.

Therefore he reproves their impiety so sharply, because they denied that God was God as often as they withdrew their confidence from the teaching of the holy man. It follows —