Idols in the heart
14
📚✭Then some of the elders of Israel came to me, and sat in front of me. 2 📚And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 3 📚✭“Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling block of their wickedness before their face. Should I be consulted by them at all? 4 📚✭Therefore speak to them, and tell them, Thus says the Lord God: When anyone of the house of Israel sets up his idols in his heart, and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and comes to the prophet, I, the LORD, will answer the one who comes, in accordance with his many idols, 5 📚✭so that I may take hold of the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols. 6 📚✭“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: Repent, and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations.
7 📚“When anyone of the house of Israel, or of the foreigners who have settled in Israel, separates himself from me, and sets up his idols in his heart, and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and comes to a prophet to consult him concerning me, I, the LORD, will answer him by myself, 8 📚and I will set my face against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from among my people; and you will know that I am the LORD.
9 📚✭“And if a prophet is induced to speak a thing, I, the LORD have induced that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from among my people Israel. 10 📚✭And they will bear the punishment for their wickedness. The punishment of the prophet will be the same as the punishment of the one who seeks him out, 11 📚✭so that the house of Israel may no longer go astray from me, or be polluted any more with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people, and I may be their God, says the Lord God”.
No way of escape
12 The word of the LORD came again to me, saying, 13 📚✭“Son of man, when the land sins against me by unfaithfulness, then I will stretch out my hand on it, and will break the staff of its bread and send famine on it, and cut off man and beast from it. 14 📚Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel✭, and Job, were in it, they would rescue only their own souls by their righteousness, says the Lord God.
15 📚“If I cause wild beasts to pass through the land, and they depopulate it, so that it becomes desolate, no man passing through it because of the beasts, 16 📚even if these three men were in it, as I live, says the Lord God, they would rescue neither sons nor daughters; only they would be rescued, and the land would become desolate.
17 📚“Or if I bring a sword on that land, and say, ‘Sword, go through the land’, so that I cut off man and beast from it, 18 even if these three men were in it, as I live, says the Lord God, they would rescue neither sons nor daughters, but only they themselves would be rescued.
19 📚“Or if I send a plague into that land, and pour out my fury on it through bloodshed, to cut off from it man and beast, 20 📚even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, says the Lord God, they would rescue neither son nor daughter; they would rescue only their own souls by their righteousness.
21 📚“For thus says the Lord God: How much more when I send my four severe judgments✭ on Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the wild beast, and the plague, to cut off from it man and beast? 22 📚✭Yet there will be left in it a remnant who will be brought out, both sons and daughters. See, they will come out to you, and you will see their way and their deeds, and you will be comforted concerning the disaster that I have brought on Jerusalem, concerning all that I have brought on it. 23 📚✭And they will comfort you, when you see their ways and their deeds; and you will know that I have not done all that I have done in it without reason, says the Lord God”.