And now the Lord’s word came to me:

Turn thy eyes, son of man, towards the hills of thy own country, and prophesy their doom.

Mountains of Israel, thou shalt say, listen to the word of the Lord God; here is a message from the Lord God to mountain and hill, to rocky slope and river-bed. I mean to let the sword loose on you, pull shrine down,

overthrow altar, break column, pile corpses before the false god’s feet;

before every idol, sons of Israel prostrate in death, before every altar, the ground strewn with their bones.

In all your confines, every city desolate, every shrine wrecked and ruined; deserted and defaced the altars, forlorn the idols, shattered the columns, obliterated all the work of man;

and ever the dead lying in the midst of you. Will you doubt, then, the power of the Lord?✻

I will leave a remnant of you; some shall escape the sword, to live on among the Gentiles, dispersed far and wide;

and these survivors, in their land of exile, shall once again bethink themselves of me. Wanton heart that played me false, eyes that hankered still after idols, shall be tamed now; they will look back with loathing on all the foul wrong they did,

and confess it was no empty boast, when I threatened this calamity.✻

Clap hands and stamp feet, the Lord God says, and cry aloud, Out upon the foul wrong the men of Israel did, that are now doomed to perish by sword, famine and pestilence!

Keep they their distance, the plague shall smite them, come they to grips, the sword; safe behind the battlements, they shall die of famine; so shall my vengeance take toll of them.

Who shall doubt the Lord’s power, when the dead lie thick at the feet of your idols and about your altars; on hill-top and mountain height, in forest covert and under spreading oak, where once men would burn fragrant incense to their false gods?

When the blow falls, I will make their countryside, once so thickly inhabited, into a wilderness; Deblatha✻ itself is not more forlorn. And who shall doubt the Lord’s power?