15. The land will no longer have to listen to the nations mocking it or see the peoples sneer at it. The land will no longer rob the nation of its children. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.”
16. The Lord spoke to me.
17. “Mortal man,” he said, “when the Israelites were living in their land, they defiled it by the way they lived and acted. I regarded their behaviour as being as ritually unclean as a woman is during her monthly period.
18. I let them feel the force of my anger because of the murders they had committed in the land and because of the idols by which they had defiled it.
19. I condemned them for the way they lived and acted, and I scattered them through foreign countries.
20. Wherever they went, they brought disgrace on my holy name, because people would say, ‘These are the people of the Lord, but they had to leave his land.’
21. That made me concerned for my holy name, since the Israelites brought disgrace on it everywhere they went.