Then he shouted in my ears, “Approach, ¹  you who are to visit destruction on the city, each with his destructive weapon in his hand!”

“‘But you, mountains of Israel, will grow your branches, and bear your fruit for my people Israel; for they will arrive soon. ¹ 

Join ¹  them as one stick; ²  they will be as one in your hand.

When you have finished purifying it, you will offer an unblemished young bull and an unblemished ram from the flock.

You will present them before the Lord, and the priests will scatter salt on them ¹  and offer them up as a burnt offering to the Lord.

They will enter my sanctuary, and approach my table to minister to me; they will keep my charge.

The burnt offering which the prince will offer to the Lord on the Sabbath day will be six unblemished lambs and one unblemished ram.

“‘But the Levitical priests, the descendants of Zadok ¹  who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, will approach me to minister to me; they will stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the sovereign Lord.

So I prophesied as I was commanded. There was a sound when I prophesied – I heard ¹  a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to bone.

“On the second day, you will offer a male goat without blemish for a sin offering. They will purify the altar just as they purified it with the bull.

On the day he enters the sanctuary, into the inner court to serve in the sanctuary, he must offer his sin offering, declares the sovereign Lord.

Therefore tell them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: I hereby end this proverb; they will not recite it in Israel any longer.’ But say to them, ‘The days are at hand when every vision will be fulfilled. ¹ 

does not eat pagan sacrifices on the mountains ¹  or pray to the idols ²  of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife, does not have sexual relations with a ³  woman during her period,

you are guilty because of the blood you shed and defiled by the idols you made. You have hastened the day of your doom; ¹  the end of your years has come. ²  Therefore I will make ³  you an object of scorn to the nations, an object to be mocked by all lands.

When the priests enter, then they will not go out from the sanctuary to the outer court without taking off their garments in which they minister, for these are holy; they will put on other garments, then they will go near the places where the people are.”

When you bring foreigners, those uncircumcised in heart and in flesh, into my sanctuary, you desecrate ¹  it – even my house – when you offer my food, the fat and the blood. You ²  have broken my covenant by all your abominable practices.