The Living Bible (258 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
And he said to me: “Stand up, son of dust,
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and I will talk to you.”
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And the Spirit entered into me as he spoke, and set me on my feet.
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“Son of dust,” he said, “I am sending you to the nation of Israel, to a nation rebelling against me. They and their fathers have kept on sinning against me until this very hour.
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For they are a hard-hearted, stiff-necked people. But I am sending you to give them my messages—the messages of the Lord God.
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And whether they listen or not (for remember, they are rebels), they will at least know they have had a prophet among them.
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“Son of dust, don’t be afraid of them; don’t be frightened even though their threats are sharp and barbed and sting like scorpions. Don’t be dismayed by their dark scowls. For remember, they are rebels!
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You must give them my messages whether they listen or not (but they won’t,
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for they are utter rebels).
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Listen, son of dust, to what I say to you. Don’t you be a rebel too! Open your mouth and eat what I give you.”
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Then I looked and saw a hand holding out to me a scroll, with writing on both sides. He unrolled it, and I saw that it was full of warnings and sorrows and pronouncements of doom.
And he said to me: “Son of dust, eat what I am giving you—eat this scroll! Then go and give its message to the people of Israel.”
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So I took the scroll.
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“Eat it all,” he said. And when I ate it, it tasted sweet as honey.
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Then he said: “Son of dust, I am sending you to the people of Israel with my messages.
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I am not sending you to some far-off foreign land where you can’t understand the language—
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no, not to tribes with strange, difficult tongues. (If I did, they would listen!)
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I am sending you to the people of Israel, and they won’t listen to you any more than they listen to me! For the whole lot of them are hard, impudent, and stubborn.
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But see, I have made you hard and stubborn too—as tough as they are.
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I have made your forehead as hard as rock. So don’t be afraid of them, or fear their sullen, angry looks, even though they are such rebels.”
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Then he added: “Son of dust, let all my words sink deep into your own heart first; listen to them carefully for yourself.
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Then, afterward, go to your people in exile, and whether or not they will listen, tell them: ‘This is what the Lord God says!’”
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Then the Spirit lifted me up, and the glory of the Lord began to move away, accompanied by the sound of a great earthquake.
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It was the noise of the wings of the living beings as they touched against each other, and the sound of their wheels beside them.
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The Spirit lifted me up, and took me away to Tel Abib, another colony of Jewish exiles beside the Chebar River. I went in bitterness and anger,
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but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me. And I sat among them, overwhelmed, for seven days.
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At the end of the seven days, the Lord said to me:
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“Son of dust, I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel; whenever I send my people a warning, pass it on to them at once.
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If you refuse to warn the wicked when I want you to tell them, ‘You are under the penalty of death; therefore repent and save your life,’ they will die in their sins, but I will punish you. I will demand your blood for theirs.
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But if you warn them, and they keep on sinning and refuse to repent, they will die in their sins, but you are blameless—you have done all you could.
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And if a good man becomes bad, and you refuse to warn him of the consequences, and the Lord destroys him, his previous good deeds won’t help him—he shall die in his sin. But I will hold you responsible for his death and punish you.
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But if you warn him and he repents, he shall live, and you have saved your own life too.”
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I was helpless in the hand of God, and when he said to me, “Go out into the valley and I will talk to you there”—
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I arose and went, and oh, I saw the glory of the Lord there, just as in my first vision! And I fell to the ground on my face.
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Then the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet. He talked to me and said: “Go, imprison yourself in your house,
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and I will paralyze you
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so you can’t leave;
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and I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you can’t reprove them; for they are rebels.
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But whenever I give you a message, then I will loosen your tongue and let you speak, and you shall say to them: ‘The Lord God says.’ Let anyone listen who wants to, and let anyone refuse who wants to, for they are rebels.
“And now, son of dust, take a large brick and lay it before you and draw a map of the city of Jerusalem on it. Draw a picture of siege mounds being built against the city, put enemy camps around it and battering rams surrounding the walls.
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And put an iron plate between you and the city, like a wall of iron. Demonstrate how an enemy army will capture Jerusalem!
“There is special meaning in each detail of what I have told you to do. For it is a warning to the people of Israel.
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“Now lie on your left side for 390 days,
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to show that Israel will be punished for 390 years by captivity and doom. Each day you lie there represents a year of punishment ahead for Israel.
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Afterwards, turn over and lie on your right side for forty days, to signify the years of Judah’s punishment. Each day will represent one year.
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“Meanwhile continue your demonstration of the siege of Jerusalem; lie there with your arm bared to signify great strength and power in the attack against her.
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This will prophesy her doom.
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And I will paralyze you
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so that you can’t turn over from one side to the other until you have completed all the days of your siege.
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“During the first 390 days eat bread made of flour mixed from wheat, barley, beans, lentils, and spelt. Mix the various kinds of flour together in a jar.
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You are to ration this out to yourself at the rate of eight ounces at a time, one meal a day.
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And use one quart of water a day; don’t use more than that.
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Each day take flour from the barrel and prepare it as you would barley cakes. While all the people are watching, bake it over a fire, using dried human dung as fuel, and eat it.
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For the Lord declares, Israel shall eat defiled bread in the Gentile lands to which I exile them!”
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Then I said, “O Lord God, must I be defiled by using dung? For I have never been defiled before in all my life. From the time I was a child until now I have never eaten any animal that died of sickness or that I found injured or dead; and I have never eaten any of the kinds of animals our law forbids.”
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Then the Lord said, “All right, you may use cow dung instead of human dung.”
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Then he told me, “Son of dust, bread will be tightly rationed in Jerusalem. It will be weighed out with great care and eaten fearfully. And the water will be portioned out in driblets, and the people will drink it with dismay.
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I will cause the people to lack both bread and water; they will look at one another in frantic terror and waste away beneath their punishment.
“Son of dust, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor to shave your head and beard; use balances to weigh the hair into three equal parts.
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Place a third of it at the center of your map of Jerusalem. After your siege, burn it there. Scatter another third across your map and slash at it with a knife. Scatter the last third to the wind, for I will chase my people with the sword.
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Keep just a bit of the hair and tie it up in your robe;
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then take a few hairs out and throw them into the fire, for a fire shall come from this remnant and destroy all Israel.”
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The Lord God says, “This illustrates what will happen to Jerusalem, for she has turned away from my laws and has been even more wicked than the nations surrounding her.”
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Therefore the Lord God says: “I, even I, am against you and will punish you publicly while all the nations watch.
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Because of the terrible sins you have committed, I will punish you more terribly than I have ever done before or ever will again.
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Fathers will eat their own sons, and sons will eat their fathers; and those who survive will be scattered into all the world.
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“For I promise you: Because you have defiled my Temple with idols and evil sacrifices, therefore I will not spare you nor pity you at all.
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One-third of you will die from famine and disease; one-third will be slaughtered by the enemy; and one-third I will scatter to the winds, sending the sword of the enemy chasing after you.
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Then at last my anger will be appeased. And all Israel will know that what I threaten I do.
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“So I will make a public example of you before all the surrounding nations and before everyone traveling past the ruins of your land.
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You will become a laughingstock to the world and an awesome example to everyone, for all to see what happens when the Lord turns against an entire nation in furious rebuke. I, the Lord, have spoken it!
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“I will shower you with deadly arrows of famine to destroy you. The famine will become more and more serious until every bit of bread is gone.
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And not only famine will come, but wild animals will attack and kill you and your families; disease and war will stalk your land, and the sword of the enemy will slay you; I, the Lord, have spoken it!”