Ezekiel 23:38

¹³“‘“But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. They didn’t walk in my statutes and they rejected my ordinances, which if a man keeps, he shall live in them. They greatly profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them in the wilderness, to consume them.

⁷He set the engraved image of Asherah that he had made in the house of which the LORD said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever;

²⁴because they had not executed my ordinances, but had rejected my statutes, and had profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols.

²⁰As for the beauty of his ornament, he set it in majesty; but they made the images of their abominations and their detestable things therein. Therefore I have made it to them as an unclean thing.

¹⁷Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said to them, “What evil thing is this that you do, and profane the Sabbath day? ¹⁸Didn’t your fathers do this, and didn’t our God bring all this evil on us and on this city? Yet you bring more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.”

⁴He built altars in the LORD’s house, of which the LORD said, “I will put my name in Jerusalem.”

⁸You have despised my holy things, and have profaned my Sabbaths.

⁵Then he said to me, “Son of man, lift up your eyes now the way toward the north.” So I lifted up my eyes the way toward the north, and saw, northward of the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry.

⁶He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they do? Even the great abominations that the house of Israel commit here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? But you will again see yet other great abominations.”

⁷He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall. ⁸Then he said to me, “Son of man, dig now in the wall.” When I had dug in the wall, I saw a door.

⁹He said to me, “Go in, and see the wicked abominations that they do here.”

¹⁰So I went in and looked, and saw every form of creeping things, abominable animals, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed around on the wall. ¹¹Seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel stood before them. In the middle of them Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan stood, every man with his censer in his hand; and the smell of the cloud of incense went up.

¹²Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘The LORD doesn’t see us. The LORD has forsaken the land.’” ¹³He said also to me, “You will again see more of the great abominations which they do.”

¹⁴Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’s house which was toward the north; and I saw the women sit there weeping for Tammuz. ¹⁵Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? You will again see yet greater abominations than these.”

¹⁶He brought me into the inner court of the LORD’s house; and I saw at the door of the LORD’s temple, between the porch and the altar, there were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the LORD’s temple and their faces toward the east. They were worshiping the sun toward the east.

²⁷But if you will not listen to me to make the Sabbath day holy, and not to bear a burden and enter in at the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it will devour the palaces of Jerusalem. It will not be quenched.”’”

¹¹He took away the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance of the LORD’s house, by the room of Nathan Melech the officer who was in the court; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. ¹²The king broke down the altars that were on the roof of the upper room of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the LORD’s house, and beat them down from there, and cast their dust into the brook Kidron.