Chapter 5

¹ Son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take scales and divide the hair you have cut off. ² When the days of the siege come to an end, burn one-third of the hair inside the city. Take another third and cut it up with the sword throughout the city. Scatter the last third to the wind while I pursue it with the sword. ³ In addition, take a few of these hairs and conceal them in a fold of your robe. ⁴ From these, however, take some and cast them into the fire and burn them completely. A fire will spread from there against the entire house of Israel.

⁵ Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem, which I have established in the midst of the nations and surrounded with foreign countries. ⁶ But she has rebelled against my ordinances and my statutes more wickedly than all the nations and the countries around her, rejecting my ordinances and refusing to obey my laws.

⁷ Therefore, thus says the Lord God: Because you have been more rebellious than the nations that surround you and have not followed my statutes or respected my ordinances and have not even observed the laws of the nations that surround you, ⁸ therefore, thus says the Lord God: I too am coming against you, and I will execute my judgments on you for all the nations to see. ⁹ And because of all your abominable offenses, I will inflict punishment on you that I have never done before and the like of which I will never do again. ¹⁰ Those of you who are parents will eat your children, and children will eat their parents. I will execute judgments on you, and any of you who survive I will scatter to the winds.

¹¹ Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all of your detestable and vile abominations, I will destroy you. I will not take pity on you or spare you. ¹² One-third of you will die of pestilence or perish because of famine, one-third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and one-third I will scatter to the four winds and pursue them with the sword.

¹³ Then, once my anger has abated and I have vented my wrath against them, they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my jealousy. ¹⁴ I will make you a desolate waste and the object of mockery among the nations that surround you, a fate clearly evident to all those who pass by. ¹⁵ You will be an object of mockery and abuse, a frightening warning to the nations that surround you, when I execute my judgment on you in anger and fury and dreadful punishments. I, the Lord, have spoken.

¹⁶ When I loose my deadly arrows of famine against you, arrows of destruction which I will send forth to destroy you, and when I afflict you with one famine after another and cut off your supply of food, ¹⁷ I will afflict you with even more intense famine and wild beasts, and you will be left childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken.