Ezekiel 23:43

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.

“For my people are foolish. They don’t know me. They are foolish children, and they have no understanding. They are skillful in doing evil, but they don’t know how to do good.”

Friends deceive each other, and will not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies. They weary themselves commiting iniquity.

They came in and possessed it, but they didn’t obey your voice and didn’t walk in your law. They have done nothing of all that you commanded them to do. Therefore you have caused all this evil to come upon them.

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

Yahweh says: “I have returned to Zion, and will dwell in the middle of Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be called ‘The City of Truth;’ and the mountain of Yahweh of Armies, ‘The Holy Mountain.’ ”

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.’

They gathered together to Mizpah, and drew water, and poured it out before Yahweh, and fasted on that day, and said there, “We have sinned against Yahweh.” Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpah.

yet if they repent in the land where they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication to you in the land of those who carried them captive, saying, ‘We have sinned, and have done perversely; we have dealt wickedly;’

For our fathers were unfaithful, and have done that which was evil in Yahweh our God’s sight, and have forsaken him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of Yahweh, and turned their backs.

In you, Yahweh, I take refuge. Let me never be disappointed. Deliver me in your righteousness.

Therefore Yahweh’s anger burns against his people, and he has stretched out his hand against them and has struck them. The mountains tremble, and their dead bodies are as refuse in the middle of the streets. For all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out.

For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before me,” says the Lord 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.

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.

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.

we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your ordinances.

We haven’t listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

While I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before Yahweh my God for the holy mountain of my God;

you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me,

“ ‘If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me; and also that because they walked contrary to me,

“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.

Therefore he brought on them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or gray-headed. He gave them all into his hand.

Let your ear now be attentive, and your eyes open, that you may listen to the prayer of your servant, which I pray before you at this time, day and night, for the children of Israel your servants, while I confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Yes, I and my father’s house have sinned.

“But they and our fathers behaved proudly, hardened their neck, didn’t listen to your commandments,

However you are just in all that has come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly.

Deliver me in your righteousness, and rescue me. Turn your ear to me, and save me.

and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn’t make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with God.

We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and derision to those who are around us.

Turn us, God of our salvation, and cause your indignation toward us to cease.

Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with grain, yet his foolishness will not be removed from him.

Why should you be beaten more, that you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

“I have struck your children in vain. They received no correction. Your own sword has devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.

“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.

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.”

The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?

because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger: they, their kings, their princes, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

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.

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.’

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.”

“So you will know that I am Yahweh, your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain. Then Jerusalem will be holy, and no strangers will pass through her any more.

Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into God’s Kingdom.”

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

“Behold, you have risen up in your fathers’ place, an increase of sinful men, to increase the fierce anger of Yahweh toward Israel.

Forgive, Yahweh, your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and don’t allow innocent blood among your people Israel.” The blood shall be forgiven them.

Yahweh rooted them out of their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and thrust them into another land, as it is today.”

Yahweh said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” Therefore the name of that place was called Gilgal to this day.

The children of Israel again did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight; and Yahweh delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

But if you will not listen to Yahweh’s voice, but rebel against the commandment of Yahweh, then Yahweh’s hand will be against you, as it was against your fathers.

“Go inquire of Yahweh for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found; for great is Yahweh’s wrath that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that which is written concerning us.”

yet if they come to their senses in the land where they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication to you in the land of their captivity, saying, ‘We have sinned, we have done perversely, and have dealt wickedly;’

Don’t be like your fathers and like your brothers, who trespassed against Yahweh, the God of their fathers, so that he gave them up to desolation, as you see.

Since the days of our fathers we have been exceedingly guilty to this day; and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests, have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to confusion of face, as it is this day.

We have dealt very corruptly against you, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances, which you commanded your servant Moses.

Yet many years you put up with them, and testified against them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not listen. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.

We have sinned with our fathers. We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedly.

“Cry aloud! Don’t spare! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Declare to my people their disobedience, and to the house of Jacob their sins.

“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.

As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so the house of Israel is ashamed: they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets,

Let us lie down in our shame, and let our confusion cover us; for we have sinned against Yahweh our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day. We have not obeyed Yahweh our God’s voice.”

O Yahweh, don’t your eyes look on truth? You have stricken them, but they were not grieved. You have consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction. They have made their faces harder than a rock. They have refused to return.

Do they provoke me to anger?” says Yahweh. “Don’t they provoke themselves, to the confusion of their own faces?”

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good, who are accustomed to do evil.

Say, ‘Hear Yahweh’s word, kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem: Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says, “Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which whoever hears, his ears will tingle.

Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, with its kings and its princes, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse, as it is today;

Now when Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, a eunuch, who was in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon (the king was then sitting in Benjamin’s gate),

But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil.

Thus Yahweh could no longer bear it, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which you have committed. Therefore your land has become a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without inhabitant, as it is today.

He said to me, “Son of man, I send you to the children of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me even to this very day.

“ ‘Moreover I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations that are around you, in the sight of all that pass by.

You will know that I am Yahweh, for you have not walked in my statutes, You have not executed my ordinances, but have done after the ordinances of the nations that are around you.” ’ ”

“ ‘ “Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters, whom you have borne to me, and you have sacrificed these to them to be devoured. Was your prostitution a small matter,

“Will you judge them, son of man? Will you judge them? Cause them to know the abominations of their fathers.

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.

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

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

Lord, according to all your righteousness, let your anger and please let your wrath be turned away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a reproach to all who are around us.

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;

For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’

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.

Are you not like the children of the Ethiopians to me, children of Israel?” says Yahweh. “Haven’t I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?

Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.

It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into God’s Kingdom.”

But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”

How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and you don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God?

He arose and went; and behold, there was a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship.

because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be.

Therefore we know no one after the flesh from now on. Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.

having eyes full of adultery, and who can’t cease from sin; enticing unsettled souls; having a heart trained in greed; children of cursing;

If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

The beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority.