“In you have they taken bribes to shed blood, you have taken usury and increase, and you have greedily gained from your neighbours by oppression, and have forgotten me, says the Lord Yahweh.”
In Jerusalem the love of money has made men forget God, a common problem through the ages. Here men take bribes so as to bring about another's death (compare Exodus 23:8; Isaiah 1:23; Amos 5:12; Micah 3:11), they take high interest from the poor, they take a high percentage of what the poor earn to cover their own loans, they oppress others so as to gain from them (Exodus 22:21-24; Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 19:33; Deuteronomy 24:17), and all because they have forgotten God. We must all remember that the way we live ever demonstrates whether we remember God or not.
They would, of course, have protested that they had not forgotten God. That the daily sacrifices were still offered, that they still gave some recognition to the God of Israel. But God's point was that they had not remembered Him as He was, a holy and righteous God. The Yahweh they ‘worshipped' was but a pale, undemanding shadow of what He really was. And that applied to Ezekiel's listeners as well.