“Slanderous men have been in you to shed blood, and in you they have eaten on the mountains. In the midst of you they have committed lewdness. In you they have discovered their fathers' nakedness, in you they have humbled her who was unclean in her separation. And one has committed abomination with his neighbour's wife, and another has lewdly defiled his daughter in law, and another in you has humbled his sister, his father's daughter.”
The catalogue of sins continues. And this was in what they called ‘the holy city'. Men had brought about the deaths of others by slander and lies (see Exodus 20:16; Leviticus 19:16); idolatrous, licentious feasts had been celebrated within the city on its mountains; and sexual misbehaviour which it is even a shame to speak about had been practised widely (see Leviticus 18:7; Leviticus 18:19-20; Leviticus 20:10; Leviticus 21:17).