1    2   These were the words of the Lord to me: Man, look towards the mountains of Israel, and prophesy to them: 3   Mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. This is his word to mountains and hills, watercourses and valleys: I am bringing a sword against you, and I will destroy your hill-shrines. 4   Your altars will be made desolate, your incense-altars shattered, and I will fling down your slain before your idols. 5   I will strew the corpses of the Israelites before their idols, and I will scatter your bones about your altars. 6   In all your settlements the blood-spattered altars ^note shall be laid waste and the hill-shrines made desolate. Your altars will be waste and desolate and your idols shattered and useless, your incense-altars hewn down, and all your works wiped out; 7   with the slain falling about you, you shall know that I am the Lord. 8   But when they fall, ^note I will leave you, among the nations, some who survive the sword. 9   When you are scattered in foreign lands, these survivors, in captivity among the nations, will remember how I was grieved because their hearts had turned wantonly from me and their eyes had gone roving wantonly after idols. Then they will loathe themselves for all the evil they have done with their abominations. 10   So they will know that I am the Lord, that I was uttering no vain threat when I said that I would bring this evil upon them.

11   These are the words of the Lord God: Beat your hands together, stamp with your foot, bemoan your vile abominations, people of Israel. 12   Men will fall by sword, famine, and pestilence. Far away they will die by pestilence; at home they will fall by the sword; any who survive or are spared will die by famine, and so at last my anger will be spent. 13   You will know that I am the Lord when their slain fall among the idols round their altars, on every high hill, on all mountain-tops, under every spreading tree, under every leafy terebinth, wherever they have brought offerings of soothing odour for their idols one and all. 14   So I will stretch out my hand over them and make the land a desolate waste in all their settlements, more desolate than the desert of Riblah. ^noteThey shall know that I am the Lord.

Previous section

Next section