Micaiah kept on: “I’m not done yet; listen to God’s word: I saw God enthroned, and all the angel armies of heaven Standing at attention ranged on his right and his left. And God said, ‘How can we seduce Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead?’ Some said this, and some said that. Then a bold angel stepped out, stood before God, and said, ‘I’ll seduce him.’ ‘And how will you do it?’ said God. ‘Easy,’ said the angel, ‘I’ll get all the prophets to lie.’ ‘That should do it,’ said God. ‘On your way—seduce him!’ “And that’s what has happened. God filled the mouths of your puppet prophets with seductive lies. God has pronounced your doom.”
Ezekiel 16:35The Message“‘Therefore, whore, listen to God’s Message: I, God, the Master, say, Because you’ve been unrestrained in your promiscuity, stripped down for every lover, flaunting your sex, and because of your pornographic idols and all the slaughtered children you offered to them, therefore, because of all this, I’m going to get all your lovers together, all those you’ve used for your own pleasure, the ones you loved and the ones you loathed. I’ll assemble them as a courtroom of spectators around you. In broad daylight I’ll strip you naked before them—they’ll see what you really look like. Then I’ll sentence you to the punishment for an adulterous woman and a murderous woman. I’ll give you a taste of my wrath! See the chapter |
19 Cross References
Oh! Can you believe it? The chaste city has become a whore! She was once all justice, everyone living as good neighbors, And now they’re all at one another’s throats. Your coins are all counterfeits. Your wine is watered down. Your leaders are turncoats who keep company with crooks. They sell themselves to the highest bidder and grab anything not nailed down. They never stand up for the homeless, never stick up for the defenseless.
God’s Message came to me as follows: “If a man’s wife walks out on him And marries another man, can he take her back as if nothing had happened? Wouldn’t that raise a huge stink in the land? And isn’t that what you’ve done— ‘whored’ your way with god after god? And now you want to come back as if nothing had happened.” God’s Decree.
“Tell the forest of the south, ‘Listen to the Message of God! God, the Master, says, I’ll set a fire in you that will burn up every tree, dead trees and live trees alike. Nobody will put out the fire. The whole country from south to north will be blackened by it. Everyone is going to see that I, God, started the fire and that it’s not going to be put out.’”
Attention all Israelites! God’s Message! God indicts the whole population: “No one is faithful. No one loves. No one knows the first thing about God. All this cussing and lying and killing, theft and loose sex, sheer anarchy, one murder after another! And because of all this, the very land itself weeps and everything in it is grief-stricken— animals in the fields and birds on the wing, even the fish in the sea are listless, lifeless. * * *
“So listen to God’s Word. You tell me, ‘Don’t preach to Israel. Don’t say anything against the family of Isaac.’ But here’s what God is telling you: Your wife will become a whore in town. Your children will get killed. Your land will be auctioned off. You will die homeless and friendless. And Israel will be hauled off to exile, far from home.”
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