4. You are guilty of those murders and are defiled by the idols you made, and so your day is coming, your time is up! That is why I have let the nations mock you and all the countries sneer at you.
5. Countries near by and countries far away sneer at you because of your lawlessness.
6. All Israel's leaders trust in their own strength and commit murder.
7. You people in the city do not honour your parents. You cheat foreigners and take advantage of widows and orphans.
8. You have no respect for the holy places, and you don't keep the Sabbath.
9. Some of your people tell lies about others in order to have them put to death. Some of them eat sacrifices offered to idols. Some are always satisfying their lusts.
10. Some of them sleep with their father's wife. Some force women to have intercourse with them during their period.
11. Some commit adultery, and others seduce their daughters-in-law or their half-sisters.
12. Some of your people murder for pay. Some charge interest on the loans they make to their fellow-Israelites and get rich by taking advantage of them. They have forgotten me.” The Sovereign Lord has spoken.
13. “I will bring my fist down on your robberies and murders.
14. Do you think you will have any courage left or have strength enough to lift your hand when I am finished with you? I, the Lord, have spoken, and I keep my word.
15. I will scatter your people to every country and nation and will put an end to your evil actions.
16. And so the other nations will dishonour you, but you will know that I am the Lord.”
17. The Lord said to me,
18. “Mortal man, the Israelites are of no use to me. They are like the waste metal — copper, tin, iron, and lead — left over after silver has been refined in a furnace.
19. So now I, the Sovereign Lord, am telling them that they are just as useless as that. I will bring them all together in Jerusalem