Ezekiel 14
Bad news for idol-loving leaders
Idol worshipers ask for message from God
1Some of the city leaders came to see me and sat down with me. [1] 2While they were there the LORD gave me a message. He said:3“Human, these men are devoted to idols. It’s a sin to worship those idols. So why should I give these men any message at all?
4Tell them the Lord God says this:
Any person of Israel who worships idols and then has the chutzpah to go to one of my prophets and ask for a message from me, I will certainly give them a message they deserve. I will tailor that message to them based on the number of idols they worship. 5I will do this to turn these people away from idols and back toward me.
God’s message: Stop worshiping idols
6Now I want you to go to the people of Israel and tell them that the Lord God says this:Stop it. Quit worshiping those idols and stop taking part in those disgusting worship rituals. Repent. You need to humbly apologize for what you've done and stop doing it.
7So let's be clear about this, it’s a sin for the people of Israel and immigrants living in the land to worship idols. Anyone like that who comes to a prophet and asks for a message for me will certainly get a message from me. 8I will take a stand against people like that. And I’ll let them see what it feels like to have me for an enemy. People will come to associate those people with bad luck because that's what they're going to get. I am going to revoke their citizenship in Israel. Then they'll realize that I am the LORD.
9If a prophet gets tricked into giving an upbeat message to one of these people, I will fire that prophet and revoke the prophet’s citizenship. 10They will get the punishment they deserve for that sin, just as the one who came to them with the request.
11I’ll do this to stop the people of Israel from turning their backs on me and contaminating themselves with sin. I'm doing this so they will be my people, and I will be their God. That's what the Lord God said.
Only the bad will die
12The Lord gave me another message. He said:13Human, if a country turns its back on me, I will cut off its supply of food and attack it with famine, which will hurt the people and the animals. 14I'm telling you this, even if men as godly as Noah, Daniel, and Job lived in that country, that would not save the country. That would only save those men.
15Let's say I decided to punish the people by sending wild animals into the land to kill the people. And let's say the animals were so successful that people came to avoid that territory. 16If those three godly men were living in that land, they could not save their own children from the wild animals. They would only be able to save themselves. The land would lay abandoned by humans except for those three men.
17Or let's say I decide to send an army into the country to kill all the people and the animals. 18If those three godly men were living in that country at the time, they would not be able to save their own children. Only they would survive.
19The same would happen if I sent a plague into the country to turn my anger loose on the people by killing them and the animals. 20If men as righteous as Noah, Daniel, and Job we're living in that country, they would not be able to save their own children. They could save only themselves through their godliness.
Four waves against Jerusalem
21I, the Lord God, am going to do much worse to Jerusalem. I am going to unleash four waves of punishment that will kill people and animals. I'm sending invaders, famine, wild animals, and plague.22But I'm not going to kill all the people. I’m going to send survivors to join you and the other people already exiled in Babylon. [2] When you see these people and discover how sinful they are, you will better understand why I did what I did to Jerusalem. 23When you see the way these people behave, you'll realize that I did what I had to do. That's what the Lord God said.
Footnotes
114:1
They came there to see if Ezekiel would give them a message from God. That’s the implication based on what follows in the chapter.
214:22
Ezekiel was taken captive to Babylon, in what is now southern Iraq, before Babylonians got their fill of Israel’s habit of rebelling and refusing to pay tribute money to their king. So, it was from a neighboring nation that Ezekiel was predicting the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the last Jewish kingdom on earth. Jerusalem and the nation known as Judah fell in 586. The northern Jewish nation of Israel fell earlier to the Assyrian of northern Israel, in 722 BC.
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