Ezekiel 5

¹ Now you, son of man, take a sharp sword. Use it as a barber's razor on your head and your beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair.

² A third you shall burn in fire in the center of the city when the days of siege are completed. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. A third you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe a sword after them.

³ Take a small number from there and bind them in the edges of your garment.

⁴ From these again, take some and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire. From there a fire will go out to the whole house of Israel."

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

⁶ But she has rebelled against my judgments with greater wickedness than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries surrounding her. For they have rejected my judgments and have not walked in my statutes.

⁷ Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because you have been more turbulent than the nations around you—you have not walked in my statutes, you have not performed my judgments, and you have not even acted according to the judgments of the nations around you—

⁸ therefore thus says the Lord GOD: I myself am against you—yes, I myself—and I will execute judgments in your midst before the eyes of the nations.

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

¹⁰ Therefore fathers will eat sons in your midst, and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments against you and scatter all your remnant to every wind.

¹¹ Therefore—as I live, declares the Lord GOD—because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and all your abominations, I myself will also withdraw. My eye will not spare, and I will not have pity.

¹² A third of you will die by plague and be consumed by famine in your midst. A third will fall by the sword around you. A third I will scatter to every wind, and I will unsheathe a sword after them.

¹³ My anger will be spent, and I will satisfy my fury against them, and I will be avenged. They will know that I, the LORD, have spoken in my zeal when I have spent my fury against them.

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

¹⁵ It will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations around you, when I execute judgments against you in anger and fury and furious rebukes—I, the LORD, have spoken—

¹⁶ when I send against you the deadly arrows of famine that are for destruction, which I will send to destroy you. I will increase the famine upon you and break your staff of bread.

¹⁷ I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will bereave you. Plague and bloodshed will pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I, the LORD, have spoken."