Ezekiel 5

1“As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor. Pass it over your head and your beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair.

2When the days of the siege are completed, burn a third of it in the fire in the middle of the city. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. Scatter a third to the wind, and I will draw a sword and pursue them.

3But take a few strands from there and tie them in the folds of your garment.

4Take some of these again, throw them into the fire, and burn them up. From there a fire will spread to the whole house of Israel.

5This is what Lord Yahweh says: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.

6But she has rebelled against my ordinances more wickedly than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries around her. For they have rejected my ordinances and have not walked in my statutes.

7Therefore this is what Lord Yahweh says: Because you have been more unruly than the nations around you, and have not walked in my statutes or kept my ordinances, and have not even acted according to the ordinances of the nations around you,

8therefore this is what Lord Yahweh says: I, even I, am against you, and I will carry out judgments among you in the sight of the nations.

9Because of all your abominations, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.

10Therefore parents will eat their children among you, and children will eat their parents. I will carry out judgments on you and scatter all your survivors to every wind.

11Therefore, as surely as I live, declares Lord Yahweh, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, I myself will cut you down. My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity.

12A third of your people will die of plague or perish from famine within you; a third will fall by the sword around you; and a third I will scatter to every wind, and I will draw a sword and pursue them.

13Then my anger will be spent, and I will satisfy my wrath on them and be appeased. And they will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken in my jealousy, when I have spent my wrath on them.

14I will make you a ruin and a disgrace among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by.

15You will be a disgrace and an object of scorn, a warning and a horror to the nations around you, when I carry out judgments on you in anger and wrath and with furious rebukes. I, Yahweh, have spoken.

16When I send against them the deadly arrows of famine, arrows of destruction that I will send to destroy you, I will bring more and more famine on you and cut off your supply of bread.

17I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, Yahweh, have spoken.”