Announcement of the End
1The word of the Lord came to me: 2“Son of man, this is what the Lord God says to the land of Israel:
An end! The end has come
on the four corners of the earth.
3The end is now upon you;
I will send my anger against you
and judge you according to your ways.
I will punish you for all your detestable practices.
4I will not look on you with pity or spare you,
but I will punish you for your ways
and for your detestable practices within you.
Then you will know that I am the Lord.”
5This is what the Lord God says:
Look, one disaster after another is coming!
6An end has come; the end has come!
It has awakened against you.
Look, it is coming!
7Doom has come on you,
inhabitants of the land.
The time has come; the day is near.
There will be panic on the mountains
and not celebration.
8I will pour out my wrath on you very soon;
I will exhaust my anger against you
and judge you according to your ways.
I will punish you for all your detestable practices.
9I will not look on you with pity or spare you.
I will punish you for your ways
and for your detestable practices within you.
Then you will know
that it is I, the Lord, who strikes.
10Here is the day! Here it comes!
Doom is on its way.
The rod has blossomed;
arrogance has bloomed.
11Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness.
None of them will remain:
none of that crowd,
none of their wealth,
and none of the eminent among them.
12The time has come; the day has arrived.
Let the buyer not rejoice
and the seller not mourn,
for wrath is on her whole crowd.
13The seller will certainly not return
to what was sold
as long as he and the buyer remain alive.
For the vision concerning her whole crowd
will not be revoked,
and because of the iniquity of each one,
none will preserve his life.
14They have blown the trumpet
and prepared everything,
but no one goes to war,
for my wrath is on her whole crowd.
15The sword is on the outside;
plague and famine are on the inside.
Whoever is in the field will die by the sword,
and famine and plague will devour
whoever is in the city.
16The survivors among them will escape
and live on the mountains.
Like doves of the valley,
all of them will moan,
each over his own iniquity.
17All their hands will become weak,
and all their knees will run with urine.
18They will put on sackcloth,
and horror will overwhelm them.
Shame will cover all their faces,
and all their heads will be bald.
19They will throw their silver into the streets,
and their gold will seem like something filthy.
Their silver and gold will be unable to save them
in the day of the Lord’s wrath.
They will not satisfy their appetites
or fill their stomachs,
for these were the stumbling blocks
that brought about their iniquity.
20He appointed his beautiful ornaments for majesty,
but they made their detestable images from them,
their abhorrent things.
Therefore, I have made these
into something filthy to them.
21I will hand these things over
to foreigners as plunder
and to the wicked of the earth as spoil,
and they will profane them.
22I will turn my face from them
as they profane my treasured place.
Violent men will enter it and profane it.
23Forge the chain,
for the land is filled with crimes of bloodshed,
and the city is filled with violence.
24So I will bring the most evil of nations
to take possession of their houses.
I will put an end to the pride of the strong,
and their sacred places will be profaned.
25Anguish is coming!
They will look for peace, but there will be none.
26Disaster after disaster will come,
and there will be rumor after rumor.
Then they will look for a vision from a prophet,
but instruction will perish from the priests
and counsel from the elders.
27The king will mourn;
the prince will be clothed in grief;
and the hands of the people of the land will tremble.
I will deal with them according to their own conduct,
and I will judge them by their own standards.
Then they will know that I am the Lord.