Ezekiel 5:1-17

VIN(i) 1 "As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword. Take and use it as a barber's razor to shave your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair. 2 »You should burn one-third of the hair in the fire at the center of the city when the siege is over. Take one third and strike it with the sword all around the city. The remaining one third you shall scatter to the wind. I will unsheathe a sword behind them. 3 And you shall take a few of them, and wrap them in the fold of your garment. 4 »Take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire. Fire will spread from there to all the house of Israel. 5 "This is what the Sovereign LORD says: This is Jerusalem. I have set her at the center of the nations with countries all around her. 6 »She has rebelled against my ordinances more wickedly than the nations and against my statutes more than the lands that surround her. My people have rejected my ordinances and have not walked in my statutes. 7 For this cause the Lord has said: Because you have been more uncontrolled than the nations round about you, and have not been guided by my rules or kept my orders, but have kept the orders of the nations round about you; 8 therefore the Sovereign LORD says: 'Behold, I, even I, am against you; and I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations. 9 '"Because of all your abominations, I will do among you what I have not done before, and the like of which I will never do again. 10 Therefore the fathers will eat the sons within you, and the sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments on you; and I will scatter the whole remnant of you to all the winds. 11 '"As I live, declares the Sovereign LORD,' 'because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominations I will withdraw, and my eye will have no pity and I will not spare you. 12 '"One third of your people will die by plague or be consumed by famine! One third will fall by the sword! One third I will scatter to every wind! I will unsheathe a sword behind them (war will follow them). 13 '"I will unleash my anger. I will use my fury against you, and I will get revenge. When my fury is unleashed against you, you will know that I, the LORD, spoke to you with all my zeal. 14 And I will make you into a waste and a reproach among the nations that are around you, in the eyes of all who pass by. 15 So it will be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment, to the nations that are around you, when I execute judgments on you in anger and in wrath, and in wrathful rebukes—I, the LORD, have spoken it— 16 '"When I shoot my destructive arrows of famine at you, I will shoot to kill you. I will bring more and more famine into your land. I will cut off your food supply. 17 And I will send against you famine and fierce animals, and they will make you childless; and plague and blood will pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I, the LORD, I have spoken!"