Ezekiel 16:25

Now the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinners against Yahweh.

They called to Lot, and said to him, “Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them.”

So they feared Yahweh, and also made from among themselves priests of the high places for themselves, who sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.

Haven’t you driven out the priests of Yahweh, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites, and made priests for yourselves according to the ways of the peoples of other lands? Whoever comes to consecrate himself with a young bull and seven rams may be a priest of those who are no gods.

For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which you have desired, and you shall be confounded for the gardens that you have chosen.

Yahweh says, “Where is the bill of your mother’s divorce, with which I have put her away? Or to which of my creditors have I sold you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, and your mother was put away for your transgressions.

You have set up your memorial behind the doors and the posts, for you have exposed yourself to someone besides me, and have gone up. You have enlarged your bed and made you a covenant with them. You loved what you saw on their bed.

“Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backsliding will rebuke you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing, that you have forsaken Yahweh your God, and that my fear is not in you,” says the Lord, Yahweh of Armies.

“For long ago I broke off your yoke, and burst your bonds. You said, ‘I will not serve;’ for on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed yourself, playing the prostitute.

Therefore the showers have been withheld and there has been no latter rain; yet you have had a prostitute’s forehead and you refused to be ashamed.

Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed. They couldn’t blush. Therefore they will fall among those who fall. In the time of their visitation they will be cast down, says Yahweh.

All your lovers have forgotten you. They don’t seek you. For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the greatness of your iniquity, because your sins were increased.

You took some of your garments, and made for yourselves high places decked with various colors, and played the prostitute on them. This shall not happen, neither shall it be.

You will stumble in the day, and the prophet will also stumble with you in the night; and I will destroy your mother.

Therefore in one day her plagues will come: death, mourning, and famine; and she will be utterly burned with fire; for the Lord God who has judged her is strong.

She arose, and went away, and put off her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.

Judah acknowledged them, and said, “She is more righteous than I, because I didn’t give her to Shelah, my son.” He knew her again no more.

“ ‘The daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the prostitute, she profanes her father. She shall be burned with fire.

When she had brought them near to him to eat, he took hold of her, and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister!”

For the saying which he cried by Yahweh’s word against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, will surely happen.”

You have shown your people hard things. You have made us drink the wine that makes us stagger.

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman who fears Yahweh, she shall be praised.

Awake, awake! Stand up, Jerusalem, you who have drunk from Yahweh’s hand the cup of his wrath. You have drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it.

your own iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together”, says Yahweh, “who have burned incense on the mountains, and blasphemed me on the hills. Therefore I will first measure their work into their bosom.”

I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruit and its goodness; but when you entered, you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.

Moreover, Yahweh said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and has played the prostitute there.

Because she took her prostitution lightly, the land was polluted, and she committed adultery with stones and with wood.

A lion has gone up from his thicket, and a destroyer of nations. He is on his way. He has gone out from his place, to make your land desolate, that your cities be laid waste, without inhabitant.

Don’t trust in lying words, saying, ‘Yahweh’s temple, Yahweh’s temple, Yahweh’s temple, are these.’

The wise men are disappointed. They are dismayed and trapped. Behold, they have rejected Yahweh’s word. What kind of wisdom is in them?

Though our iniquities testify against us, work for your name’s sake, Yahweh; for our rebellions are many. We have sinned against you.

You will know that I am Yahweh, when their slain men are among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the tops of the mountains, under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the places where they offered pleasant aroma to all their idols.

So I will break down the wall that you have plastered with whitewash, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered. It will fall, and you will be consumed in the middle of it. Then you will know that I am Yahweh.

“that you have built for yourselves a vaulted place, and have made yourselves a lofty place in every street.

They played the prostitute in Egypt. They played the prostitute in their youth. Their breasts were fondled there, and their youthful nipples were caressed there.

Righteous men will judge them with the judgment of adulteresses and with the judgment of women who shed blood; because they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands.

They return, but not to the Most High. They are like a faulty bow. Their princes will fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue. This will be their derision in the land of Egypt.

Therefore I am like a lion to them. Like a leopard, I will lurk by the path.

Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour.

Her princes within her are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves. They leave nothing until the next day.

Another sign was seen in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns.

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too.

Yahweh said, “Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous,

You shall appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall keep their priesthood, but the stranger who comes near shall be put to death.”

You shall surely destroy all the places in which the nations that you shall dispossess served their gods: on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree.

Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers. This people will rise up and play the prostitute after the strange gods of the land where they go to be among them, and will forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them.

However every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities in which they lived.

He himself appointed priests for the high places, for the male goats, and for the calves which he had made.

For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their engraved images.

The boar out of the wood ravages it. The wild animals of the field feed on it.

arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,

Hear Yahweh’s word, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice. Righteousness lodged in her, but now there are murderers.

For Yahweh says, “You were sold for nothing; and you will be redeemed without money.”

“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says Yahweh.

“Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been lain with? You have sat waiting for them by the road, as an Arabian in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your prostitution and with your wickedness.

Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against Yahweh your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed my voice,’ says Yahweh.”

A voice is heard on the bare heights, the weeping and the petitions of the children of Israel; because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten Yahweh their God.

He has left his covert, as the lion; for their land has become an astonishment because of the fierceness of the oppression, and because of his fierce anger.

The children are impudent and stiff-hearted. I am sending you to them, and you shall tell them, ‘This is what the Lord Yahweh says.’

Then he said to me, “Son of man, lift up your eyes now the way toward the north.” So I lifted up my eyes the way toward the north, and saw, northward of the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry.

“ ‘ “How weak is your heart,” says the Lord Yahweh, “since you do all these things, the work of an impudent prostitute;

in that you build your vaulted place at the head of every way, and make your lofty place in every street, and have not been as a prostitute, in that you scorn pay.

“ ‘ “Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and in her daughters. She also didn’t strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

Her princes within it are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, that they may get dishonest gain.

She hasn’t left her prostitution since leaving Egypt; for in her youth they lay with her. They caressed her youthful nipples; and they poured out their prostitution on her.

Thus I will make your lewdness to cease from you, and remove your prostitution from the land of Egypt; so that you will not lift up your eyes to them, nor remember Egypt any more.’

and sat on a stately bed, with a table prepared before it, whereupon you set my incense and my oil.

When Yahweh spoke at first by Hosea, Yahweh said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution and children of unfaithfulness; for the land commits great adultery, forsaking Yahweh.”

Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;

Therefore Yahweh says: ‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line; and you yourself shall die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’ ”

Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, you nation that has no shame,

But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Woe to them! For they went in the way of Cain, and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire, and perished in Korah’s rebellion.

They cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had their ships in the sea were made rich by reason of her great wealth!’ For she is made desolate in one hour.

that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, small and great.”

She took off the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is on the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she wasn’t given to him as a wife.

Then he asked the men of her place, saying, “Where is the prostitute, that was at Enaim by the road?” They said, “There has been no prostitute here.”

After these things, his master’s wife set her eyes on Joseph; and she said, “Lie with me.”

He made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, who were not of the sons of Levi.

Turn my eyes away from looking at worthless things. Revive me in your ways.

There is a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes! Their eyelids are lifted up.

The look of their faces testify against them. They parade their sin like Sodom. They don’t hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought disaster upon themselves.

Moreover Yahweh said, “Because the daughters of Zion are arrogant, and walk with outstretched necks and flirting eyes, walking to trip as they go, jingling ornaments on their feet;

On a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed. You also went up there to offer sacrifice.

Therefore a lion out of the forest will kill them. A wolf of the evenings will destroy them. A leopard will watch against their cities. Everyone who goes out there will be torn in pieces, because their transgressions are many and their backsliding has increased.

Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush. Therefore they will fall among those who fall. When I visit them, they will be cast down,” says Yahweh.

“ ‘ “But you trusted in your beauty, and played the prostitute because of your renown, and poured out your prostitution on everyone who passed by. It was his.

As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them into Chaldea.

Yet she multiplied her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth, in which she had played the prostitute in the land of Egypt.

“The Lord Yahweh says: ‘You will drink of your sister’s cup, which is deep and large. You will be ridiculed and held in derision. It contains much.

They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn incense on the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, because its shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the prostitute, and your brides commit adultery.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, will make her desolate, will strip her naked, will eat her flesh, and will burn her utterly with fire.