The Daily Audio Bible

The day has come for the Lord to punish Israel

7 The Lord gave this message to me: ² ‘Son of man, this is what I, the Almighty Lord, say to the land of Israel: The end is now here! I will soon destroy the whole land. ³ The time has come for your final punishment! You will know that I am very angry with you. I will punish you because of the bad way that you have lived. You will receive the punishment that you deserve for all the disgusting things that you have done. ⁴ I will not be sorry for you. I will not be kind to you. I will punish you as you deserve. You have done disgusting things. So I will punish you and you will know that I am the Lord.

⁵ This is what the Almighty Lord says: Terrible trouble is coming to you! It will be worse than any other trouble. ⁶ The end has now come! It is finally here to destroy you! Look out! ⁷ You people who live in the land will now receive terrible punishment. The day for that to happen is very near. There will be no more sound of happy parties on the mountains. Instead there will be shouts of fear. ⁸ Very soon, I will punish you because of my great anger. You will know how angry I am. I will judge you for the way that you have lived. I will punish you as you deserve for the disgusting things that you have done. ⁹ I will not be sorry for you. I will not be kind to you. I will punish you as you deserve, because of the disgusting things that you have done. Then you will know that I, the Lord, am causing you pain.

¹⁰ Yes, the day of your punishment is here! Terrible trouble is coming to you! Like a tree that is ready to make flowers, your proud and wicked acts are ready for punishment. ¹¹ You use violence to help you to do wicked things. None of all those people will escape. None of their riches or valuable things will remain. ¹² The day of punishment has now come! The person who buys things will no longer be happy. Nor will the person who sells things. My anger will bring pain to all of them. ¹³ Any man who sells his land will never get it back as long as he lives. God has shown what he will do to all those people. He will not change his mind. Each one will lose his life because of their sins.

¹⁴ The soldiers make a noise with trumpets to prepare for war. But nobody goes out to fight a battle because my anger has brought punishment for all the people.

¹⁵ The enemy is ready to attack outside the city. Inside the city, there is disease and famine. Enemy soldiers will kill the people who are in the country. Famine and disease will kill everyone who is in the city. ¹⁶ Those who remain alive will escape. They will run to the mountains. They will be like doves that hunters have chased out of the valleys. They will cry aloud because of their sins. ¹⁷ Their hands will be weak. Their knees will shake. ¹⁸ They will wear sackcloth. They will be very afraid. Their faces will show that they are ashamed. They will cut all the hair from their heads. ¹⁹ They will throw their silver away in the streets. They will think that their gold has no value, like dirt. Their silver and their gold will not be able to save them on the day of the Lord's great anger. When they are hungry, their money will not buy them any food. It is their riches that have caused them to do wicked things. ²⁰ They were proud of their beautiful jewels. They used them to make disgusting idols and images. That is why I, the Lord, have made them hate their valuable things. ²¹ I will allow foreigners and wicked people to take those things from them. They will use those valuable things in a disgusting way. ²² Those foreigners and robbers will go into my holy temple. They will cause it to become unclean. But I will look away and I will allow them to do that.

²³ Prepare chains to tie my people. The whole land is full of murder and violence. ²⁴ I will bring the most wicked people from other nations to attack. They will take the houses of my people and they will live in them. The strong men among my people will no longer boast. Enemies will spoil the holy places where my people worshipped.

²⁵ Terrible trouble is coming to my people! When they are afraid, they will look for peace. But they will not find it. ²⁶ Many troubles will happen, one after another. There will be lots of news about terrible things. People will ask the prophets to tell them what will happen. The priests will not have anything to teach the people. The leaders will not have any good advice. ²⁷ The king will be very sad. His son will not hope for anything good to happen. The people will shake with fear.

I will punish them as they deserve for the way that they have lived. I will judge them in the same way that they have judged other people. Then they will know that I am the Lord.’

Disgusting things in God's temple

8 On the fifth day of the sixth month of the sixth year, I was sitting in my house. The leaders of Judah were sitting in front of me.^[a] While I sat there, the Almighty Lord took hold of me with great power.^[b]

² I looked up and I saw something that looked like a man. The lower part of his body looked like fire. Above that, his body looked like bright metal. ³ He put out something in the shape of a hand. He took hold of the hair on my head. Then the Spirit lifted me up, high in the sky, and took me to Jerusalem.^[c] This happened in the vision which God gave to me. I came to the north gate of the temple's inside yard. In that place there was a disgusting idol that made God very angry. ⁴ Then I saw that the bright glory of Israel's God was there. It was like the glory that I had seen beside the River Kebar.

⁵ Then the Lord said to me, ‘Son of man, look up towards the north.’ When I looked, I saw the disgusting idol. It stood at the entrance, on the north side of the altar gate.

⁶ He said to me, ‘Son of man, look at what they are doing! Israel's people are doing very disgusting things here. They are chasing me far away from my holy temple. But you will see even worse things than these.’

⁷ Then the Lord took me to the entrance of the temple's yard. As I looked, I saw a hole in the wall. ⁸ He said to me, ‘Son of man, make a hole through the wall here.’ So I dug into the wall. I found a door in it.

⁹ He said to me, ‘Go in there. Look at the wicked things that they are doing in this place.’ ¹⁰ So I went in and I looked. I saw pictures of many things on the walls all around. There were pictures of snakes and other disgusting animals. There were also images of the things that Israel's people were worshipping. ¹¹ 70 of Israel's leaders were there. Shaphan's son Jaazaniah, was also among them. Each of them held a pot to burn incense. The smell of the incense rose up above them.

¹² The Lord said, ‘Son of man, look at the wicked things that Israel's leaders are doing! They are doing them secretly in the dark. Each of them has a room where they worship their images of idols. They say, “The Lord does not see us! The Lord has gone away from our land!” ’

¹³ The Lord said to me, ‘You will see even worse things that they are doing.’

¹⁴ Then he took me to entrance at the north gate of the temple. I saw some women who were sitting there. They were weeping because the god Tammuz was dead.^{[d] 15} He said to me, ‘Son of man, look at that! But you will see even worse things than these.’

¹⁶ Then the Lord took me to the inside yard of his temple. I could see about 25 men who were standing between the altar and the front of the temple. Their backs were turned towards the Lord's temple. Their faces looked towards the east. They were bending down low to worship the sun that was rising in the east!^[e]

¹⁷ The Lord said to me, ‘Son of man, look at that! The people of Judah are doing these disgusting things here in my temple! That is a terrible thing! And they are also doing violent things everywhere in their land. They continue to make me angry all the time. Look at them! They insult me as much as they can! ¹⁸ So now I will punish them in my great anger. I will not be sorry for them. I will not be kind to them. They may shout at me for help, but I will not listen to them.’

The death of people who worship idols

9 I heard the Lord shout loudly, ‘Bring here the men who will punish the people of this city! Tell the guards to bring their weapons with them.’ ² Then I looked and I saw six men. They were coming from the higher gate that is on the north side of the temple. Each man carried his weapon and he was ready to kill. A man who was wearing white linen clothes was among them. At his side he had a small box with pens in it. They came in and they stood next to the bronze altar.^[f]

³ The bright glory of Israel's God then moved up from above the cherubs where it had been. It moved to the entrance of the temple. Then the Lord called to the man who was wearing linen clothes. ⁴ He said, ‘Go everywhere in the city of Jerusalem. Find the people who are very sad because of the disgusting things that people are doing in the city. Use your pens to put a mark on those people. Put the mark on the front of their heads.’

⁵ While I listened, the Lord said to the other men, ‘Follow that man through the city. Kill people who do not have his mark on their heads. Do not be sorry for them. Do not be kind to them. ⁶ Kill the old men, young men and girls. Kill the women and the children. Destroy them all! But do not touch anyone who has the mark on their head.’

So the men started to kill. The first people that they killed were the city's leaders who were in front of the temple.

⁷ The Lord said to them, ‘Fill the yards of the temple with dead bodies! Make the temple an unclean place! Go and do it now!’ So they went out and they started to kill people everywhere in the city. ⁸ I was alone while they were doing this. I bent down low with my face towards the ground. I called out, ‘Almighty Lord! Will you destroy all Israel's people who are still alive? Are you so angry with the people of Jerusalem that you will do that?’

⁹ He answered me, ‘The sins of the people of Israel and Judah are very great. They murder people everywhere in the land. In the city, nobody does what is right. They say, “The Lord has gone away from our land! The Lord does not see what we are doing!”  ¹⁰ So I will not be sorry for them. I will not be kind to them. Now I will punish them as they deserve for the things that they have done.’

¹¹ Then I saw again the man who was wearing linen clothes, with the box of pens. He brought this message to the Lord: ‘I have done what you commanded me to do.’

5 Every leader of God's priests comes from among the people. That special priest's work is to serve God on behalf of God's people. He offers gifts and sacrifices to God, so that God will forgive the people's sins. ² That priest himself may often do wrong things, because he is weak and human. As a result, he understands other people who make mistakes. He can be kind to people who do wrong things. ³ But, because he himself does wrong things, he must offer sacrifices to God on behalf of himself, as well as on behalf of the people.

⁴ Nobody decides for himself to become a leader of the priests. God himself must choose him. That is how Aaron became a priest.^[a]

⁵ It is the same with Christ. He did not choose himself to be God's special priest. He did not choose to make himself important like that. God chose him. God showed that Christ was very important. God said to him:

⁶ And in another place in the Bible God says this:

⁷ When Jesus Christ lived on earth as a man, he often prayed to God. He asked God to help him. He prayed strongly and he cried loudly with many tears. He knew that God could save him from death. And God listened to Jesus when he prayed, because Jesus served God.^[d]

⁸ Jesus is God's Son. But he still had trouble and pain. In that way, he learned to obey God completely. ⁹ As a result, Jesus became the person who can save everyone who obeys him. Because of Jesus, God forgives their sins for ever. ¹⁰ God has chosen Jesus to be his special priest in the same way that Melchizedek was.

We must be careful that we do not go away from Christ

¹¹ We have a lot more to say to you about these things. But you are slow to understand things. As a result, it is difficult to explain any more to you now. ¹² After all this time as believers in Jesus, you ought to be teachers. Instead of that, you still need someone to teach you the first lessons about God's message. You have become like babies, who need milk instead of proper food. ¹³ Anyone who still thinks like a baby does not yet understand God's message about what is right. It is as if they are still drinking only milk. ¹⁴ People who have grown up eat proper food. In the same way, people who have been believers for a long time should understand more about God's message. They should have learned about what is good and about what is bad. They should know the difference between those.

God takes care of his people^[a]