Ezekiel 4

1“As for you, son of man, take a brick, set it in front of you, and draw a city on it—Jerusalem.

2Then lay siege to it: build siege works against it, heap up a ramp against it, set up camps against it, and place battering rams against it all around.

3Then take an iron griddle and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city. Turn your face toward it, so that it is under siege, and you are to besiege it. This will be a sign for the house of Israel.

4Then lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it. For the number of days that you lie on it, you will bear their iniquity.

5I have assigned you the years of their iniquity as a number of days, 390 days. So you will bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

6When you have completed these, lie down a second time, on your right side, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days. I have assigned you one day for each year.

7Turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared, and prophesy against it.

8Look, I will put ropes on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.

9Take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, put them in one container, and make them into bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days.

10The food you eat is to be weighed out, twenty shekels a day; you are to eat it at set times.

11You are also to drink water by measure, a sixth of a hin; you are to drink it at set times.

12Eat it as you would a barley cake, and bake it in their sight over human dung.”

13Then Yahweh said, “This is how the people of Israel will eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will drive them.”

14But I said, “Ah, Lord Yahweh! I have never been defiled. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything that died on its own or was torn by wild animals, and no foul meat has ever entered my mouth.”

15He said to me, “See, I will let you use cow dung instead of human dung. You may bake your bread over that.”

16Then he said to me, “Son of man, I am about to cut off the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They will eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they will drink water by measure and in horror,

17so that they will lack bread and water. They will look at one another in horror and waste away because of their iniquity.”