Ezekiel 23:19

but don’t seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don’t pass to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.

You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived. You shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. You shall not follow their statutes.

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

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

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.

So I went in and looked, and saw every form of creeping things, abominable animals, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed around on the wall.

“ ‘ “Now when I passed by you, and looked at you, behold, your time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over you, and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore to you, and entered into a covenant with you,” says the Lord Yahweh, “and you became mine.

“ ‘ “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.

They will burn your houses with fire, and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women. I will cause you to cease from playing the prostitute, and you will also give no hire any more.

“Though you, Israel, play the prostitute, yet don’t let Judah offend; and don’t come to Gilgal, neither go up to Beth Aven, nor swear, ‘As Yahweh lives.’

standing far away for the fear of her torment, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For your judgment has come in one hour.’

He received what they handed him, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it a molded calf. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

They shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat idols, after which they play the prostitute. This shall be a statute forever to them throughout their generations.’

For Yahweh your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has known your walking through this great wilderness. These forty years, Yahweh your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing.

Many times they have afflicted me from my youth up. Let Israel now say,

Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth?’

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.

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

Yet you have not walked in their ways, nor done their abominations; but soon you were more corrupt than they in all your ways.

Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish to you an everlasting covenant.

“ ‘As for you, house of Israel, the Lord Yahweh says: “Go, everyone serve his idols, and hereafter also, if you will not listen to me; but you shall no more profane my holy name with your gifts and with your idols.

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

Lest I strip her naked, and make her bare as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.

She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them; and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.’

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.

The wine press was trodden outside of the city, and blood came out of the wine press, even to the bridles of the horses, as far as one thousand six hundred stadia.

and cried out as they looked at the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like the great city?’

A mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and cast it into the sea, saying, “Thus with violence will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down, and will be found no more at all.

“I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

At the end of every three years you shall bring all the tithe of your increase in the same year, and shall store it within your gates.

“Now therefore fear Yahweh, and serve him in sincerity and in truth. Put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, in Egypt; and serve Yahweh.

His concubine played the prostitute against him, and went away from him to her father’s house to Bethlehem Judah, and was there for four months.

So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said to them, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Look and behold your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

However, Jehu didn’t depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he made Israel to sin, the golden calves that were in Bethel and that were in Dan.

They abandoned all the commandments of Yahweh their God, and made molten images for themselves, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshiped all the army of the sky, and served Baal.

For that would be a heinous crime. Yes, it would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges;

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

Go out, you daughters of Zion, and see king Solomon, with the crown with which his mother has crowned him, in the day of his weddings, in the day of the gladness of his heart.

They didn’t say, ‘Where is Yahweh who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, through a land that no one passed through, and where no man lived?’

“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.

“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.

“Return, backsliding children,” says Yahweh; “for I am a husband to you. I will take one of you from a city, and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.

“Stand in the gate of Yahweh’s house, and proclaim this word there, and say, ‘Hear Yahweh’s word, all you of Judah, who enter in at these gates to worship Yahweh.’ ”

Yahweh said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Hear the words of this covenant, and do them.

who says, ‘I will build myself a wide house and spacious rooms,’ and cuts out windows for himself; with a cedar ceiling, and painted with red.

In the prophets of Jerusalem I have also seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one returns from his wickedness. They have all become to me as Sodom, and its inhabitants as Gomorrah.”

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.

Those of you that escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols. Then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.

I caused you to multiply as that which grows in the field, and you increased and grew great, and you attained to excellent ornament. Your breasts were formed, and your hair grew; yet you were naked and bare.

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.

“ ‘ “Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have raged against me in all these things; therefore, behold, I also will bring your way on your head,” says the Lord Yahweh: “and you shall not commit this lewdness with all your abominations.

Your elder sister is Samaria, who dwells at your left hand, she and her daughters; and your younger sister, who dwells at your right hand, is Sodom with her daughters.

Cast away from you all your transgressions, in which you have transgressed; and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit: for why will you die, house of Israel?

“ ‘ “But they rebelled against me, and would not listen to me. They didn’t all throw away the abominations of their eyes. They also didn’t forsake the idols of Egypt. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the middle of the land of Egypt.

I said to their children in the wilderness, ‘Don’t walk in the statutes of your fathers. Don’t observe their ordinances or defile yourselves with their idols.

I am Yahweh your God. Walk in my statutes, keep my ordinances, and do them.

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

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.

She gave herself as a prostitute to them, all of them the choicest men of Assyria. She defiled herself with the idols of whoever she lusted after.

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.’

“ ‘Thus I will cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to be lewd like you.

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;

I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she will respond there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

“All their wickedness is in Gilgal; for there I hated them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house! I will love them no more. All their princes are rebels.

“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

They will walk after Yahweh, who will roar like a lion; for he will roar, and the children will come trembling from the west.

If Gilead is wicked, surely they are worthless. In Gilgal they sacrifice bulls. Indeed, their altars are like heaps in the furrows of the field.

Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.

but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from the sky and destroyed them all.

Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside of the gate.

Another, a second angel, followed, saying, “Babylon the great has fallen, which has made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality.”

The great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.

He cried with a mighty voice, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and she has become a habitation of demons, a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird!

About three months later, Judah was told, “Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has played the prostitute. Moreover, behold, she is with child by prostitution.” Judah said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned.”

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.

In all your abominations and your prostitution you have not remembered the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and were wallowing in your blood.

You have built your lofty place at the head of every way, and have made your beauty an abomination, and have opened your feet to everyone who passed by, and multiplied your prostitution.

You have moreover multiplied your prostitution to the land of merchants, to Chaldea; and yet you weren’t satisfied with this.

Samaria hasn’t committed half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have justified your sisters by all your abominations which you have done.

I said to them, ‘Each of you throw away the abominations of his eyes. Don’t defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.’

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.

“She increased her prostitution; for she saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with red,

Thus you called to memory the lewdness of your youth, in the caressing of your nipples by the Egyptians because of your youthful breasts.

“Go to Bethel, and sin; to Gilgal, and sin more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days,

Their dead bodies will be in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.

“Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Yahweh says, “I remember for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your weddings; how you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.