Ezekiel 6:3

Listen now to what Yahweh says: “Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear what you have to say.

and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly;

In seven days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will destroy every living thing that I have made from the surface of the ground.”

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.

Again he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and tell them, ‘You dry bones, hear Yahweh’s word.

I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.

I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”

Yahweh will make the pestilence cling to you, until he has consumed you from off the land where you go in to possess it.

Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When he had worked wonderfully among them, didn’t they let the people go, and they departed?

Salvation belongs to Yahweh. May your blessing be on your people.

My salvation and my honor is with God. The rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.

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

I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?

Then Yahweh said to me, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind would not turn toward this people. Cast them out of my sight, and let them go out!

I will give your substance and your treasures for a plunder without price, and that for all your sins, even in all your borders.

Go to them of the captivity, to the children of your people, and speak to them, and tell them, ‘This is what the Lord Yahweh says,’ whether they will hear, or whether they will refuse.

“ ‘ “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.

Hear Yahweh’s word, you children of Israel; for Yahweh has a charge against the inhabitants of the land: “Indeed there is no truth, nor goodness, nor knowledge of God in the land.

Yahweh also has a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; according to his deeds he will repay him.

“I sent plagues among you like I did Egypt. I have slain your young men with the sword, and have carried away your horses; and I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.

Cain left Yahweh’s presence, and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.

Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done.

I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will follow after them; and I will get honor over Pharaoh, and over all his armies; and the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh.” They did so.

Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the children of Israel; for the children of Israel went out with a high hand.

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you walk upright.

but the land that you go over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of the sky,

Give ear, you heavens, and I will speak. Let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

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.”

He killed all the priests of the high places that were there, on the altars, and burned men’s bones on them; and he returned to Jerusalem.

He carried out from there all the treasures of Yahweh’s house, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold, which Solomon king of Israel had made in Yahweh’s temple, as Yahweh had said.

Yahweh sat enthroned at the Flood. Yes, Yahweh sits as King forever.

and a fruitful land into a salt waste, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it.

“Come now, and let’s reason together,” says Yahweh: “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Yahweh stands up to contend, and stands to judge the peoples.

They will not look to the altars, the work of their hands; neither shall they respect that which their fingers have made, either the Asherah poles, or the incense altars.

In days to come, Jacob will take root. Israel will blossom and bud. They will fill the surface of the world with fruit.

“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.”

Hear, earth! Behold, I will bring evil on this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not listened to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it.

“I will appoint over them four kinds,” says Yahweh: “the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, the birds of the sky, and the animals of the earth, to devour and to destroy.

“When this people, or the prophet, or a priest, asks you, saying, ‘What is the message from Yahweh?’ Then you shall tell them, ‘ “What message? I will cast you off,” says Yahweh.’

A noise will come even to the end of the earth; for Yahweh has a controversy with the nations. He will enter into judgment with all flesh. As for the wicked, he will give them to the sword,” ’ says Yahweh.”

“Micah the Morashtite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah; and he spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, ‘Yahweh of Armies says: “ ‘Zion will be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem will become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.’

How long will you go here and there, you backsliding daughter? For Yahweh has created a new thing in the earth: a woman will encompass a man.”

I will send on you famine and evil animals, and they will bereave you. Pestilence and blood will pass through you. I will bring the sword on you. I, Yahweh, have spoken it.’ ”

“ ‘Yet the children of your people say, “The way of the Lord is not fair;” but as for them, their way is not fair.

“Son of man, those who inhabit the waste places in the land of Israel speak, saying, ‘Abraham was one, and he inherited the land; but we are many. The land is given us for inheritance.’

“As for you, son of man, the children of your people talk about you by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak to one another, everyone to his brother, saying, ‘Please come and hear what the word is that comes out from Yahweh.’

They will no more be a prey to the nations, neither will the animals of the earth devour them; but they will dwell securely, and no one will make them afraid.

He said to me, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell among the children of Israel forever. The house of Israel will no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their prostitution, and by the dead bodies of their kings in their high places;

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.

Hear, you peoples, all of you. Listen, O earth, and all that is therein: and let the Lord Yahweh be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”

who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ship was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.

but indeed for this cause I have made you stand: to show you my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth,

Moses said to the people, “Don’t be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of Yahweh, which he will work for you today; for you will never again see the Egyptians whom you have seen today.

The Egyptians pursued, and went in after them into the middle of the sea: all of Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.

I will bring a sword upon you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant. You will be gathered together within your cities, and I will send the pestilence among you. You will be delivered into the hand of the enemy.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land which you go over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days on it, but will utterly be destroyed.

Outside the sword will bereave, and in the rooms, terror on both young man and virgin, the nursing infant with the gray-haired man.

His spirit departs, and he returns to the earth. In that very day, his thoughts perish.

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

Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for Yah, Yahweh, is my strength and song; and he has become my salvation.”

I will go to the great men and will speak to them, for they know the way of Yahweh, and the law of their God.” But these with one accord have broken the yoke, and burst the bonds.

Destroyers have come on all the bare heights in the wilderness; for the sword of Yahweh devours from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land. No flesh has peace.

Even their children remember their altars and their Asherah poles by the green trees on the high hills.

Heal me, O Yahweh, and I will be healed. Save me, and I will be saved; for you are my praise.

It will come to pass in that day, says Yahweh of Armies, that I will break his yoke from off your neck, and will burst your bonds. Strangers will no more make them their bondservants;

My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have caused them to go astray. They have turned them away on the mountains. They have gone from mountain to hill. They have forgotten their resting place.

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.

Therefore I will also deal in wrath. My eye won’t spare, neither will I have pity. Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.”

“Or if I bring a sword on that land, and say, ‘Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off from it man and animal;’

For when I had brought them into the land which I swore to give to them, then they saw every high hill, and every thick tree, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering. There they also made their pleasant aroma, and there they poured out their drink offerings.

and say, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, I am against you, Sidon. I will be glorified among you. Then they will know that I am Yahweh, when I have executed judgments in her, and am sanctified in her.

Some of those who are wise will fall, to refine them, and to purify, and to make them white, even to the time of the end; because it is yet for the time appointed.

I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the prostitute, and you shall not be with any other man. I will also be so toward you.”

“Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me,” says Yahweh of Armies. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; and I will turn my hand against the little ones.

This is my covenant with them, when I will take away their sins.”

By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared a ship for the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

I, even I, will bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that is in the earth will die.

Behold, I myself will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they will go in after them. I will get myself honor over Pharaoh, and over all his armies, over his chariots, and over his horsemen.

Therefore by this the iniquity of Jacob will be forgiven, and this is all the fruit of taking away his sin: that he makes all the stones of the altar as chalk stones that are beaten in pieces, so that the Asherah poles and the incense altars shall rise no more.

“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.

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.

Truly help from the hills, the tumult on the mountains, is in vain. Truly the salvation of Israel is in Yahweh our God.

My mountain in the field, I will give your substance and all your treasures for a plunder, and your high places, because of sin, throughout all your borders.

O earth, earth, earth, hear Yahweh’s word!

therefore, behold, I will utterly forget you, and I will cast you off, and the city that I gave to you and to your fathers, away from my presence.

“Son of man, speak to the children of your people, and tell them, ‘When I bring the sword on a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and set him for their watchman;

therefore, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh: The Lord Yahweh says to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the cities that are forsaken, which have become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that are all around;

“ ‘ “But you, mountains of Israel, you shall shoot out your branches, and yield your fruit to my people Israel; for they are at hand to come.

Hear, you mountains, Yahweh’s controversy, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for Yahweh has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel.

“ ‘For the Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, I myself, even I, will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.