1
Jerusalem’s Sins
The word of the Lord came to me:
2 “Son of man, will you judge her? Will you judge this city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her detestable practices
3 and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst and defiles herself by making idols,
4 you have become guilty because of the blood you have shed and have become defiled by the idols you have made. You have brought your days to a close, and the end of your years has come. Therefore I will make you an object of scorn to the nations and a laughingstock to all the countries.
5 Those who are near and those who are far away will mock you, O infamous city, full of turmoil.
6 “‘See how each of the princes of Israel who are in you uses his power to shed blood.
7 In you they have treated father and mother with contempt; in you they have oppressed the alien and mistreated the fatherless and the widow.
8 You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths.
9 In you are slanderous men bent on shedding blood; in you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and commit lewd acts.
10 In you are those who dishonor their fathers’ bed; in you are those who violate women during their period, when they are ceremonially unclean.
11 In you one man commits a detestable offense with his neighbor’s wife, another shamefully defiles his daughter-in-law, and another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter.
12 In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign Lord.