1“And you, son of man, take for yourself a sharp sword; you shall take it as a barber’s razor and pass it over your head and over your beard. Then take for yourself balances for weighing and divide the hair.
2A third you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city when the days of the siege are completed; and you shall take a third and strike it with the sword all around it; and a third you shall scatter to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.
3And you shall take from there a small number and bind them in the folds of your garment.
4And from these again you shall take, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire; from it a fire shall go out to all the house of Israel.”
5Thus says the Lord Yahweh: This is Jerusalem. I set her in the midst of the nations, with lands around her.
6But she rebelled against my judgments more wickedly than the nations, and against my statutes more than the lands around her; for they rejected my judgments, and as for my statutes, they did not walk in them.
7Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because you were more turbulent than the nations that are around you, and did not walk in my statutes, and did not do my judgments, and did not even act according to the judgments of the nations that are around you—
8therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I—even I—am against you, and I will execute judgments in your midst before the eyes of the nations.
9And I will do among you what I have not done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations.
10Therefore fathers will eat sons in your midst, and sons will eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments among you, and I will scatter all your remnant to every wind.
11Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord Yahweh, surely because you defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, I in turn will withdraw; my eye will not spare, and I too will not have pity.
12A third of you will die by the plague and be consumed by famine in your midst; and a third will fall by the sword around you; and a third I will scatter to every wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.
13Then my anger will be spent, and I will satisfy my wrath upon them, and I will be appeased; and they will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken in my zeal, when I have spent my wrath upon them.
14And I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations that are around you, before the eyes of everyone who passes by.
15And it will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations that are around you, when I execute judgments against you in anger and in wrath and in furious rebukes. I, Yahweh, have spoken.
16When I send against them the deadly arrows of famine, which are for destruction, which I will send to destroy you, then I will increase the famine against you and break your staff of bread.
17And I will send against you famine and evil beasts, and they will bereave you; and plague and blood will pass through you; and I will bring the sword upon you. I, Yahweh, have spoken.
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