¹And you, son of Adam, get yourself a sharp sword; get yourself a barber's razor, and pass it over your head and over your chin, and get yourself some scales for weighing, and divide the hair. ²Burn one third in a fire in the middle of the city when the days of the siege have been completed, and take one third and strike with the sword around it, and scatter one third in the wind, for I will draw out a sword after them. ³Then take a small number of them, and bind them to the hems of your cloak. ⁴And take some more of them, and cast them into the fire, and burn them in the fire. A fire will come out from this to the whole house of Israel.” ⁵This is what my Lord the Lord says: “This is Jerusalem. I have placed it in the middle of the nations and the countries around it. ⁶But it has turned against my justice for wickedness worse than that of the nations, and it has changed my statutes for what is worse than those of the countries which are around it, for they have rejected my judicial pronouncements, and as for my statutes, they have not walked in them.” ⁷That is why this is what my Lord the Lord says: “Since you are raging more than the nations which are around you, and you do not walk in my statutes, and you do not carry out my judicial pronouncements, and you have not carried out the judicial pronouncements of the nations which are around you” ⁸– so says my Lord the Lord – “I, indeed I, am against you, and I will carry out judgments in your midst, in the eyes of the nations. ⁹And I will do with you what I have never done, and what I will not do the like of again, on account of all your abominations. ¹⁰That is why fathers will eat their sons in your midst, and sons will eat their fathers, and I will carry out judgments in you, and I will scatter all your remnant to every wind. ¹¹That is why, as I live” – says my Lord the Lord – “it is most certainly because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your abhorrent things, and with all your abominations, that I for my part will bring about a dearth, and my eye will not pity, nor will I spare. ¹²One third of you will die in the plague, and they will come to an end in the famine in your midst, and one third will fall by the sword all around you, and I will scatter one third to every wind, and I will draw out the sword after them. ¹³And my anger will be expended, and I will bring my fury down on them, and I will be consoled, and they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my zeal when I expend my fury on them. ¹⁴And I will make you a ruin and an object of reproach among the nations which are around you, in the eyes of every one passing through. ¹⁵And it will become an object of reproach and revilement, of admonition and astonishment to the nations which are around you, when I execute justice against you in anger and in fury and in furious castigation. I, the Lord, have spoken. ¹⁶When I send the baneful arrows of famine against them, which will bring ruin, which I will send to bring ruin on you, I will increase the famine on you, and I will break the supply of your bread. ¹⁷So I will send a famine over you, and wild animals, and they will bereave you. And pestilence and bloodshed will pass through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken.”