Study Desk

"So say these things about the land of Israel. Speak to the mountains and to the hills, to the streams, and to the valleys. Tell them that this is what the Lord God says: ‘I will let my strong feelings and anger speak for me, because you had to suffer the insults from those nations.'"

So this is what the Lord God says: "I am the one making this promise! I swear that the nations around you will have to suffer for those insults.

They spilled blood on the ground when they murdered people in the land. They made the land filthy with their idols, so I showed them how angry I was.

So tell the family of Israel that this is what the Lord God says: ‘Family of Israel, you ruined my holy name in the places where you went. I am going to do something to stop this. I will not do it for your sake, Israel. I will do it for my holy name.

I will put my Spirit inside you and change you so that you will obey my laws. You will carefully obey my commands.

I will give you large crops of fruit from your trees and the harvest from your fields so that you will never again feel the shame of being hungry in a foreign country.

People will begin again to work the land so when other people pass by they will not see ruins anymore.

So I spoke to the bones for the Lord , as he said. I was still speaking, when I heard the loud noise. The bones began to rattle, and bone joined together with bone!

So I spoke to the wind for the Lord , as he said, and the breath came into the dead bodies. They came to life and stood up. There were many men—a very large army!

So speak to them for me. Tell them this is what the Lord God says: ‘My people, I will open your graves and bring you up out of them! Then I will bring you to the land of Israel.

The Lord God says, "On the mountains of Israel, I will call for every kind of terror against Gog. His soldiers will be so afraid that they will attack each other and kill each other with their swords.

And the nations will know why the family of Israel was carried away as prisoners to other countries. They will learn that my people turned against me, so I turned away from them. I let their enemies defeat them, so my people were killed in battle.

They sinned and made themselves filthy, so I punished them for the things they did. I turned away from them and refused to help them."

So this is what the Lord God says: "Now I will bring the family of Jacob back from captivity. I will have mercy on the whole family of Israel. I will show my strong feelings for my holy name.

The man said to me, "Son of man, use your eyes and ears. Look at these things and listen to me. Pay attention to everything that I show you, because you have been brought here so that I can show you these things. You must tell the family of Israel all that you see."

I saw a wall that went all the way around the outside of the Temple. In the man's hand there was a ruler for measuring things. It was 6 cubits long using the long measurement, so the man measured the thickness of the wall. It was one ruler thick. He measured the height of the wall. It was one ruler tall.

So there were four tables on the inside wall and four tables on the outside wall—eight tables that the priests used when they killed the animals for sacrifices.

Each floor of the side rooms around the Temple was wider than the floor below. The walls of the rooms around the Temple became narrower the higher they went so that the rooms on the top floors were wider. A stairway went up from the lowest floor to the highest floor through the middle floor.

The entrance was below these rooms at the east end of the building so that people could enter from the outer courtyard.

The entrance to the lower rooms was at the east end of the building so that people could enter from the open end of the path by the wall.