You shall say, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “A city that sheds blood within herself, that her time may come, and that makes idols against herself to defile her!
You have become guilty in your blood that you have shed, and are defiled in your idols which you have made! You have caused your days to draw near, and have come to the end of your years. Therefore I have made you a reproach to the nations, and a mocking to all the countries.
In you have they treated father and mother with contempt. Among you they have oppressed the foreigner. In you they have wronged the fatherless and the widow.
One has committed abomination with his neighbor’s wife, and another has lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law. Another in you has humbled his sister, his father’s daughter.
In you have they taken bribes to shed blood. You have taken interest and increase, and you have greedily gained of your neighbors by oppression, and have forgotten me,” says the Lord Yahweh.
“Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to me. All of them are bronze, tin, iron, and lead in the middle of the furnace. They are the dross of silver.
As they gather silver, bronze, iron, lead, and tin into the middle of the furnace, to blow the fire on it, to melt it, so I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath, and I will lay you there and melt you.
As silver is melted in the middle of the furnace, so you will be melted in the middle of it; and you will know that I, Yahweh, have poured out my wrath on you.’”
There is a conspiracy of her prophets within it, like a roaring lion ravening the prey. They have devoured souls. They take treasure and precious things. They have made many widows within it.
Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they caused men to discern between the unclean and the clean, and have hidden their eyes from my Sabbaths. So I am profaned among them.
Her prophets have plastered for them with whitewash, seeing false visions, and divining lies to them, saying, ‘The Lord Yahweh says,’ when Yahweh has not spoken.
The people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery. Yes, they have troubled the poor and needy, and have oppressed the foreigner wrongfully.
“I sought for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.
Therefore I have poured out my indignation on them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have brought their own way on their heads,” says the Lord Yahweh.