Ezekiel

The word of GOD came to me:

O mortal, turn your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy to them

and say: O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Sovereign GOD. Thus said the Sovereign GOD to the mountains and the hills, to the streams and the valleys: See, I will bring a sword against you and destroy your shrines.

Your altars shall be wrecked and your incense stands smashed, and I will hurl down your slain in front of your fetishes.

I will cast the corpses of the people of Israel in front of their fetishes, and scatter your bones around your altars

in all your settlements. The towns shall be laid waste and the shrines shall be devastated. Thus your altars shall be laid waste and bear their punishment;abear their punishment Targum and other ancient versions read “shall be devastated.” your fetishes shall be smashed and annihilated, your incense stands cut down, and your handiwork wiped out;

and the slain shall fall in your midst. Then you shall know that I am GOD.

Yet I will leave a remnant, in that some of you shall escape the sword among the nations and be scattered through the lands.

And those of you that escape will remember Me among the nations where they have been taken captive, how I was brokenhearted throughbhow I was brokenhearted through Emendation yields “how I broke.” their faithless hearts that turned away from Me, and through their eyes that lusted after their fetishes. And they shall loathe themselves for all the evil they committed and for all their abominable deeds.

Then they shall realize it was not without cause that I, GOD, resolved to bring this evil upon them.

Thus said the Sovereign GOD: Strike your hands together and stamp your feet and cry: Aha! over all the vile abominations of the House of Israel who shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.

Those who are far away shall die of pestilence, and those who are nearby shall fall by the sword, and anyone who survives and is protected shall die of famine. Thus I will spend My fury upon them.

And you shall know that I am GOD, when your slain lie among the fetishes round about their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak—wherever they presented pleasing odors to all their fetishes.

I will stretch out My hand against them, and lay the land waste and desolate in all their settlements, from the wilderness as far as Diblah;cDiblah A few Heb. mss. read “Riblah”; cf. 2 Kings 23.33; 25.6ff. then they shall know that I am GOD.