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Ezekiel 8

8 Sometime later, on the fifth day of the sixth month of the year—six years after the Babylonian army forcibly removed me from the land of Judah, along with King Jehoiachin and many others—I was sitting inside my house, and the elders of Judah were sitting in front of me. Right there, at that moment, the Sovereign Yahweh powerfully enabled me to see and proclaim his messages. 2 As I watched, I suddenly saw a humanoid figure resembling a blazing fire. I noticed that what seemed like his waist and below looked as if it were on fire. Above what seemed like his waist, the bodily form of this humanoid figure resembled the radiating glow of molten, white-hot metal. 3 Then, the blazing figure reached out what looked like a hand and grabbed me by a strand of hair at the top of my head. Then the wind of Yahweh’s Spirit lifted me up into the sky, so that I hovered between the earth and the sky. Then, in this vision from God, the wind carried me along to Jerusalem. I arrived at the gated entrance to the inner court of the temple—that is, the entrance that faces north. There, I saw a sculpted ritual statue of a god other than Yahweh. This seated idol incited impassioned jealousy within Yahweh. 4 Then, suddenly, in front of me, I saw the glorious brilliance that showed me that the God of Israel was there with me. It looked just like what I had seen several months before, when I was in the valley along the Kebar Canal.

5 Then Yahweh said to me, “Mortal human, look up now and gaze northwards.” So I looked up and gazed northwards. Then I could see that sculpted ritual image that incited impassioned jealousy within Yahweh, sitting in an area to the north of the gated entrance to the inner courtyard, through which one could see the altar on which priests entirely burned up meat sacrifices to Yahweh.

6 Then Yahweh said to me, “Mortal human, just look at what they are doing! The entire Israelite people are doing extraordinarily disgusting and inappropriate things here! They are alienating me from my own sacred temple! Still, you will soon witness things that are even more extraordinarily disgusting and inappropriate.”

7 Then Yahweh brought me to the entrance of the temple courtyard. When I looked, I noticed a hole in the north wall of the temple. 8 Yahweh said to me, “Mortal human, dig into the wall here.” So I started to dig into the wall, and suddenly an entrance appeared.

9 Then Yahweh said to me, “Go in through the entrance and witness the morally repulsive, disgusting things that people are doing inside my temple.” 10 So I went in and looked around. There, I saw that on every part of each wall of the room, someone had engraved depictions of every sort of ritually impure crawling animal imaginable, along with all kinds of disgusting animals, and depictions of every other god that the people of Israel worshiped by honoring ritual statues. 11 In front of all these engravings stood 70 of the elders of the Israelite people. Even Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, one of the military commanders of King Zedekiah, was standing among them! Each person was holding his own metal pan for ritually wafting the smoke of burning incense. As they stood, a thick aromatic cloud of incense smoke was rising up. 12 Then Yahweh said to me, “Mortal human, just look at what the elders of the Israelite people are doing in the dark—each one of them standing in an interior room full of engravings of his gods! They reason with themselves: ‘Surely, Yahweh cannot see us; he has left his home in the temple and vacated the land of Israel.’ ” 13 He continued, “Soon, you will witness again these people doing things that are even more extraordinarily disgusting and inappropriate.”

14 Then he brought me to the opening of the northern gated entrance of Yahweh’s temple. I suddenly noticed a group of women sitting there. They were weeping, performing a ritual lament that grieved for Tammuz, the deceased Mesopotamian god-king! 15 Then Yahweh said to me, “Mortal human, just look at this! Yet still, you will again witness things that are even more extraordinarily disgusting and inappropriate than this.”

16 He brought me into the interior courtyard of Yahweh’s temple. Suddenly, I noticed that there, at the very entrance of Yahweh’s temple, between the entrance’s porch and the altar in the middle of the interior courtyard, stood about 25 men. They had turned their backs to Yahweh’s temple and were instead facing east. I noticed that they were bowing low in an act of reverential worship to the sun, the manifestation of the god Shamash.

17 Then Yahweh said to me, “Mortal human, just look at this! Yet, these disgusting and inappropriate practices that the people of Judah are doing here, in my temple, are the least serious offense they have committed. Everywhere they live, these people behave violently, never ceasing to anger and grieve me. Yes, look! Their arrogant, violent crimes against one another openly insult and disrespect me, as if they were mockingly waving a stick in my face! 18 Therefore, I myself will behave angrily. I will not feel such tender sympathy for these people that I restrain my anger against them. Even when they desperately invoke me and shout my name, I will simply ignore them.”

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