Ezekiel 5:1-17
5 “And as for you, O son of man, take for yourself a sharp sword. As a barbers’ razor you will take it for yourself, and you must make it pass along upon your head and upon your beard,+ and you must take for yourself weighing scales and divide [the hair]* in portions.
2 A third you will burn in the very fire in the midst of the city as soon as the days of the siege have come to the full.+ And you must take another third. You will strike [it] with the sword all around her,+ and the [last] third you will scatter to the wind,* and I shall draw out a sword itself after them.+
3 “And you must take therefrom a few in number and wrap them up in your skirts.+
4 And others of them you will take and you must pitch them into the midst of the fire and incinerate them in the fire. From one* a fire will go forth to all the house of Israel.+
5 “This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘This is Jerusalem. In the midst of the nations I have set her, with lands all around her.
6 And she proceeded to behave rebelliously against my judicial decisions in wickedness more than the nations,+ and against my statutes more than the lands that are all around her, for my judicial decisions they rejected and, as for my statutes, they did not walk in them.’+
7 “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘For the reason that YOU people were more turbulent*+ than the nations that are all around YOU, in my statutes YOU did not walk and my judicial decisions YOU did not perform;+ but according to the judicial decisions of the nations that are all around YOU, YOU performed, did YOU not?+
8 therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: “Here I am against you,* [O city,] even I,+ and I will execute in the midst of you judicial decisions in the eyes of the nations.+
9 And I will do in you that which I have not done and the like of which I shall not do anymore by reason of all your detestable things.+
10 “‘“Therefore fathers themselves will eat sons in the midst of you,+ and sons themselves will eat their fathers, and I will execute in you acts of judgment and scatter all the remainder of you to every wind.”’*+
11 “‘Therefore as I am alive,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, ‘surely for the reason that it was my sanctuary that you defiled with all your disgusting things+ and with all your detestable things,+ I myself also am the One that will diminish [you]+ and my eye will not feel sorry+ and I myself also will not show compassion.+
12 A third of you—by the pestilence they will die,+ and by famine they will come to their end in the midst of you.+ And another third—by the sword they will fall all around you. And the [last] third I shall scatter even to every wind,+ and a sword is what I shall draw out after them.+
13 And my anger will certainly come to its finish+ and I will appease my rage on them+ and comfort myself;+ and they will have to know that I myself, Jehovah, have spoken in my insistence on exclusive devotion,+ when I bring my rage to its finish upon them.
14 “‘And I shall make you* a devastated place and a reproach among the nations that are all around you before the eyes of every passerby.+
15 And you must become a reproach+ and an object of reviling words,+ a warning example+ and a horror to the nations that are all around you, when I do in you acts of judgment in anger and in rage and in raging reproofs.+ I myself, Jehovah, have spoken.
16 “‘When I send the injurious arrows of the famine upon them,+ which must prove to be for ruination, which [arrows] I shall send to bring YOU people to ruin,+ even famine I shall increase upon YOU people and I will break YOUR rods around which ring-shaped loaves are suspended.*+
17 And I will send upon YOU people famine and injurious wild beasts,+ and they must bereave you of children, and pestilence+ and blood+ themselves will pass along through you, and a sword I shall bring in upon you.+ I myself, Jehovah, have spoken.’”
Footnotes
^ Lit., “divide them.”
^ “One,” masc.
^ “Rebellious,” by a correction.
^ “You,” fem. sing., referring to the city of Jerusalem, fem. sing.
^ “Wind.” Heb., ruʹach; Gr., aʹne·mon; Lat., venʹtum. That is, every direction to which the wind blows.
^ See vs 8 ftn.
^ Lit., “the rod of bread.”
