Ezekiel 13

¹⁷Now, O son of man, set your face against the daughters of your people who prophesy out of their own imagination. Prophesy against them

¹⁹Where are your prophets who prophesied to you, claiming, ‘The king of Babylon will not come against you or this land’?

¹⁵The head is the elder and honorable man, and the tail is the prophet who teaches lies.

²⁸Her prophets whitewash these deeds by false visions and lying divinations, saying, ‘This is what the Lord God says,’ when the Lord has not spoken.

¹⁰Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

²⁵The conspiracy of the princes in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing its prey. They devour the people, seize the treasures and precious things, and multiply the widows within her.

¹⁴The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading.

²⁸Let the prophet who has a dream retell it, but let him who has My word speak it truthfully. For what is straw compared to grain?” declares the Lord.

²⁹“Is not My word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that smashes a rock?”

⁷The days of punishment have come; the days of retribution have arrived—let Israel know it. The prophet is called a fool, and the inspired man insane, because of the greatness of your iniquity and hostility.

¹“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” declares the Lord.

¹³Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.

¹⁴

²“Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and tell them that this is what the Lord God says: ‘Woe to the shepherds of Israel, who only feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed their flock?

²⁰But the beast was captured along with the false prophet, who on its behalf had performed signs deceiving those who had the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. Both the beast and the false prophet were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.

¹⁰For many are rebellious and full of empty talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision,

¹¹who must be silenced. For the sake of dishonorable gain, they undermine entire households and teach things they should not.

¹¹Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. This beast had two horns like a lamb, but spoke like a dragon.

¹²And this beast exercised all the authority of the first beast and caused the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed.

¹³For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

¹⁴And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

⁵This is what the Lord says: “As for the prophets who lead My people astray, who proclaim peace while they chew with their teeth, but declare war against one who puts nothing in their mouths:

¹¹If a man of wind were to come and say falsely, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,” he would be just the preacher for this people!

³⁰I searched for a man among them to repair the wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, so that I should not destroy it. But I found no one.

¹²Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins; you will restore the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of the Streets of Dwelling.

²³So He said He would destroy them—had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach to divert His wrath from destroying them.

²²But if they had stood in My council, they would have proclaimed My words to My people and turned them back from their evil ways and deeds.”

⁹Behold, the Day of the Lord is coming—cruel, with fury and burning anger—to make the earth a desolation and to destroy the sinners within it.

⁶Wail, for the Day of the Lord is near; it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

¹⁵Then the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord did not send you, but you have persuaded this people to trust in a lie.

²⁸Her prophets whitewash these deeds by false visions and lying divinations, saying, ‘This is what the Lord God says,’ when the Lord has not spoken.

⁸For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Do not be deceived by the prophets and diviners among you, and do not listen to the dreams you elicit from them.

²⁹while they offer false visions for you and lying divinations about you—to be placed on the necks of the wicked who are slain, whose day has come, the time of their final punishment.

¹⁹Where are your prophets who prophesied to you, claiming, ‘The king of Babylon will not come against you or this land’?

²For idols speak deceit and diviners see illusions; they tell false dreams and offer empty comfort. Therefore the people wander like sheep, oppressed for lack of a shepherd.

⁶They see false visions and speak lying divinations. They claim, ‘Thus declares the Lord,’ when the Lord did not send them; yet they wait for the fulfillment of their message.

²³At that time, if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There He is!’ do not believe it.

²⁴For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive even the elect, if that were possible.

²“Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Tell those who prophesy out of their own imagination: Hear the word of the Lord!

³This is what the Lord God says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit yet have seen nothing.

⁸Therefore this is what the Lord God says: ‘Behold, I Myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations.

³and tell her that this is what the Lord says: ‘I am against you, and I will draw My sword from its sheath and cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked.

³and declare that this is what the Lord God says: Behold, I am against you, O Mount Seir. I will stretch out My hand against you and make you a desolate waste.

¹³“Behold, I am against you,” declares the Lord of Hosts. “I will reduce your chariots to cinders, and the sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voices of your messengers will no longer be heard.”

²²And you are to declare that this is what the Lord God says: ‘Behold, I am against you, O Sidon, and I will be glorified within you. They will know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments against her and demonstrate My holiness through her.

³therefore this is what the Lord God says: ‘Behold, O Tyre, I am against you, and I will raise up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves.

⁶The Lord will record in the register of the peoples: “This one was born in Zion.” Selah

²⁸May they be blotted out of the Book of Life and not listed with the righteous.

⁵⁹The following came up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, Addan, and Immer, but they could not prove that their families were descended from Israel:

⁷No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who tells lies shall stand in my presence.

¹⁵Then the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord did not send you, but you have persuaded this people to trust in a lie.

¹⁶Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. You will die this year because you have preached rebellion against the Lord.’”

¹“At that time Michael, the great prince who stands watch over your people, will rise up. There will be a time of distress, the likes of which will not have occurred from the beginning of nations until that time. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.

²⁸Her prophets whitewash these deeds by false visions and lying divinations, saying, ‘This is what the Lord God says,’ when the Lord has not spoken.

¹⁶those prophets of Israel who prophesied to Jerusalem and saw a vision of peace for her when there was no peace, declares the Lord God.’

¹⁴They dress the wound of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.

⁹But the people did not listen and Manasseh led them astray, so that they did greater evil than the nations that the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.

¹¹They dress the wound of the daughter of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.

¹³“Ah, Lord God!” I replied, “Look, the prophets are telling them, ‘You will not see the sword or suffer famine, but I will give you lasting peace in this place.’”

²²I will execute judgment upon him with plague and bloodshed. I will pour out torrents of rain, hailstones, fire, and sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him.

²Behold, the Lord has one who is strong and mighty. Like a hailstorm or destructive tempest, like a driving rain or flooding downpour, he will smash that crown to the ground.

³The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.

⁶you will be visited by the Lord of Hosts with thunder and earthquake and loud noise, with windstorm and tempest and consuming flame of fire.

⁶Therefore let all the godly pray to You while You may be found. Surely when great waters rise, they will not come near.

¹⁵For you said, “We have made a covenant with death; we have fashioned an agreement with Sheol. When the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not touch us, because we have made lies our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.”

¹⁶So this is what the Lord God says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will never be shaken.

¹⁴The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading.

¹⁵All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

³¹“Send a message telling all the exiles what the Lord says concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite. Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you—though I did not send him—and has made you trust in a lie,

³²this is what the Lord says: ‘I will surely punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his descendants. He will have no one left among this people, nor will he see the good that I will bring to My people, declares the Lord, for he has preached rebellion against the Lord.’”

¹³Elisha, however, said to the king of Israel, “What have we to do with each other? Go to the prophets of your father and of your mother!” “No,” replied the king of Israel, “for it is the Lord who has summoned these three kings to deliver them into the hand of Moab.”

³⁷He will say: “Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge,

¹⁴Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you in your time of trouble.”

³⁸“Where is your gloating now?” Zebul replied. “You said, ‘Who is Abimelech that we should serve him?’ Are these not the people you ridiculed? Go out now and fight them!”

³⁰And the Lord will cause His majestic voice to be heard and His mighty arm to be revealed, striking in angry wrath with a flame of consuming fire, and with cloudburst, storm, and hailstones.

¹⁹Then the temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple. And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.

²¹And great hailstones weighing almost a hundred pounds each rained down on them from above. And men cursed God for the plague of hail, because it was so horrendous.

⁸lightning and hail, snow and clouds, powerful wind fulfilling His word,

¹²From the brightness of His presence His clouds advanced—hailstones and coals of fire.

¹³The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded—hailstones and coals of fire.

¹⁷I struck you—all the work of your hands—with blight, mildew, and hail, but you did not turn to Me, declares the Lord.

¹⁵Are they ashamed of the abomination they have committed? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they will collapse,” says the Lord.

⁶Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble in the open field, a planting area for a vineyard. I will pour her stones into the valley and expose her foundations.

¹⁵Therefore this is what the Lord says about the prophets who prophesy in My name: I did not send them, yet they say, ‘No sword or famine will touch this land.’ By sword and famine these very prophets will meet their end!

⁹My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and speak lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of My people or be recorded in the register of the house of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord God.

¹³You went forth for the salvation of Your people, to save Your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked and stripped him from head to toe. Selah

²³therefore you will no longer see false visions or practice divination. I will deliver My people from your hands. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”

³How long will you threaten a man? Will all of you throw him down like a leaning wall or a tottering fence?

¹³this iniquity of yours is like a breach about to fail, a bulge in a high wall, whose collapse will come suddenly—in an instant!

³Then Tobiah the Ammonite, who was beside him, said, “If even a fox were to climb up on what they are building, it would break down their wall of stones!”

¹⁴They dress the wound of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.

¹⁰Because they have led My people astray, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace, and whitewashing any flimsy wall that is built,

¹¹They dress the wound of the daughter of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.

²²“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

²⁰But the wicked are like the storm-tossed sea, for it cannot be still, and its waves churn up mire and muck.

²¹“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

¹In the fifth month of that same year, the fourth year, near the beginning of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah, the prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, who was from Gibeon, said to me in the house of the Lord in the presence of the priests and all the people:

²“Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Tell those who prophesy out of their own imagination: Hear the word of the Lord!

¹⁴So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went and spoke to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, the keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the Second District.

²⁰But I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads My servants to be sexually immoral and to eat food sacrificed to idols.

⁴Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time.

³⁶There was also a prophetess named Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, who was well along in years. She had been married for seven years,

⁴when the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains from the heart of Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire.

¹⁴Their eyes are full of adultery; their desire for sin is never satisfied; they seduce the unstable. They are accursed children with hearts trained in greed.

²⁰Therefore this is what the Lord God says: See, I am against the magic charms with which you ensnare souls like birds, and I will tear them from your arms. So I will free the souls you have ensnared like birds.

³For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires.

²⁵The conspiracy of the princes in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing its prey. They devour the people, seize the treasures and precious things, and multiply the widows within her.

¹⁴They dress the wound of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.

¹⁶those prophets of Israel who prophesied to Jerusalem and saw a vision of peace for her when there was no peace, declares the Lord God.’

⁵This is what the Lord says: “As for the prophets who lead My people astray, who proclaim peace while they chew with their teeth, but declare war against one who puts nothing in their mouths:

²¹To show partiality is not good, yet a man will do wrong for a piece of bread.

³⁹And as for you, O house of Israel, this is what the Lord God says: Go and serve your idols, every one of you. But afterward, you will surely listen to Me, and you will no longer defile My holy name with your gifts and idols.

¹⁷They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord says that you will have peace,’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, ‘No harm will come to you.’

¹⁴And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns his back on wickedness. They are all like Sodom to Me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.”

²⁶Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they fail to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

¹⁸and tell them that this is what the Lord God says: Woe to the women who sew magic charms on their wrists and make veils for the heads of people of every height, in order to ensnare their souls. Will you ensnare the souls of My people but preserve your own?

⁸Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth. They are depraved in mind and disqualified from the faith.

⁹But they will not advance much further. For just like Jannes and Jambres, their folly will be plain to everyone.

¹⁵And after I have vented My wrath against the wall and against those who whitewashed it, I will say to you: ‘The wall is gone, and so are those who whitewashed it—

¹⁶those prophets of Israel who prophesied to Jerusalem and saw a vision of peace for her when there was no peace, declares the Lord God.’

⁸Therefore this is what the Lord God says: Because you have uttered vain words and seen false visions, I am against you, declares the Lord God.

⁹My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and speak lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of My people or be recorded in the register of the house of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord God.

³Surely He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly plague.

¹⁴And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns his back on wickedness. They are all like Sodom to Me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.”

¹³“Ah, Lord God!” I replied, “Look, the prophets are telling them, ‘You will not see the sword or suffer famine, but I will give you lasting peace in this place.’”

¹⁴“The prophets are prophesying lies in My name,” replied the Lord. “I did not send them or appoint them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a false vision, a worthless divination, the futility and delusion of their own minds.

¹⁷They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord says that you will have peace,’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, ‘No harm will come to you.’

⁴“You will not surely die,” the serpent told the woman.

⁵“For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

¹⁶those prophets of Israel who prophesied to Jerusalem and saw a vision of peace for her when there was no peace, declares the Lord God.’

⁴“Go throughout the city of Jerusalem,” said the Lord, “and put a mark on the foreheads of the men sighing and groaning over all the abominations committed there.”

²¹I will also tear off your veils and deliver My people from your hands, so that they will no longer be prey in your hands. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

⁶Therefore night will come over you without visions, and darkness without divination. The sun will set on these prophets, and the daylight will turn black over them.

²⁴For there will be no more false visions or flattering divinations within the house of Israel,

¹⁰This is what the Lord God says: ‘Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will demand from them My flock and remove them from tending the flock, so that they can no longer feed themselves. For I will deliver My flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.’

³And if anyone still prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will say to him, ‘You shall not remain alive, because you have spoken falsely in the name of the Lord.’ When he prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will pierce him through.

⁹And the great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.